A Man and an Institution: Sir Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretariat and the Custody of Cabinet Secrecy

The controversy surrounding the publication of Richard Crossman's Cabinet Diaries (1975) brought to the fore opposing concepts of 'open' and 'closed' government within Britain's free society. While a balance has for the moment been struck concerning the secrecy of Cabinet proceedings, a historical question remains: by what process, and with what results, has official secrecy come to envelop the practices of modern Cabinet government? This book tackles that key question, drawing upon a uniqu...