The Secret State: Whitehall And the Cold War - Hardcover

Hennessy, Peter

3.94

290 ratings by Goodreads

9780713996265: The Secret State: Whitehall And the Cold War

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713996269 ISBN 13: 9780713996265

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2002

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Based on the 2001 Penguin lectures, Hennessy's book examines the growth of the secret services in Britain, from the high point of British imperialism to the present day and explores their role in the most secretive government in the developed world.As the foremost historian of Britain's state structures, Hennessy is uniquely will placed to explain the functions and the foibles of the nexus of agencies that most perfectly characterise that state.

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Review:

History is often best understood as a series of errors and misjudgements with profound, if not disastrous, consequences, but The Secret State reverses the trend as it is the story of a group of people who, with a bit of luck and a lot of skill, actually got it right. Had you asked many politicians or military personnel back in 1952, very few would have put money on the world remaining free of nuclear war for the next 50 years, especially given the history of the first half of the 20th century. But, with a few narrow squeaks along the way, peace prevailed and The Secret State goes some way to explaining Britain's part in that achievement.

With the domino-like collapse of the Eastern Bloc communist regimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Cold War effectively ended and with it the need for many documents relating to that period to remain secret. In 1992, as part of the Waldegrave Initiative, the Conservative government, under pressure from historians such as Hennessy, began to drip-feed previously classified documents into the public domain, and to date more than 100,000 items have been released. From these, Hennessy has been able to piece together all the retaliation procedures had a nuclear strike been launched against Britain. The picture that emerges is surprisingly reassuring; many of the documents are couched in the formal stiff-upper-lip of both the military and Whitehall of the 50s and 60s, but there is a humanity and pacifism, too. Far from being the hawks of popular imagination, the military clearly went to great lengths to keep us out of a nuclear war, both by their actions at home and abroad. Britain may have been a smallish player compared to the US and the USSR in the global nuclear game, but it did its fair share of keeping the peace by curbing some of its more aggressive American counterparts. Hennessy is a past master at bringing dusty archives to life and The Secret State is one of those rare books that reflects credit not only on the author but on its subjects, too. This is a must read for anyone who has ever wondered just how lucky they are to still be alive. --John Crace

Review:

a fascinating new history of Whitehall and the Cold War -- The Mail on Sunday, 3 March 2002

he tells the story with a sparkling combination of wit and infectious enthusiasm -- History Today, July 2002

riveting, path-breaking and wonderfully readable -- The Times, 6 March 2002

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