"
These are the things they didn't want you to know. The inner thoughts of prime ministers; the missives from the Palace that the royals wanted kept away from prying eyes. The things the cabinet were only prepared to discuss behind closed doors, on the strict understanding that no one would find out about it until long after they were safely drawing their pensions. The secrets so worrying to the powers-that-be that they decreed they should be kept locked away for decades. And in many cases it's very hard to see why ..."
"Harold Macmillan and the Queen did enjoy a good gossip. "The House of Commons is in a rather excitable mood," the prime minister confided to Her Majesty on 17 February 1963. .."
"When the boat comes in 1950
How dull does the Imports Research Committee sound? Very dull indeed. Which is deliberate. It made it less likely that anyone would ask questions about it. So no one would ever get round to wondering why it had senior figures from the Ministry of Defence, Directorate of Scientific Intelligence and Security Service sitting on it. Because the committee was set up to look into one very specific import: one no one wanted to see arriving on our shores: atom bombs..."
"Prince Charles, sleeper agent? 1969
George Thomas was a worried man. "I have written this letter because I did not want the office to know about it," the Secretary of State for Wales confided at the top of a handwritten note to Prime Minister Harold Wilson in July 1969. "A dangerous situation is developing." The object of his concerns? Charles, the bright shiny new Prince of Wales invested at Caernarfon Castle amid much pomp and pageantry just three weeks previously. Thomas thought he might be a terrorist..."
"Nelson Mandela's bookshelf 1962..."
"The Ironing Lady 1979
Seven weeks after the removal vans pulled out of Downing Street in 1979, the Department of the Environment revealed how much public cash was spent getting Number 10 ready for its new occupants: £1,736. The same parliamentary answer revealed that the new Chancellor, Geoffrey Howe, had spent half as much again doing up the flat next door (to be fair, it is bigger, which is why Tony and Cherie Blair demanded Number 11 for their own brood in 1997 and forced the bachelor Gordon Brown to swap). But Mrs Thatcher was still furious..."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/13/state-secrets-adam-macqueenIgnorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
