1. Burke Trend to Brook, 4 Oct. 1957, Trend to Brook, 21 Oct. 1957, CAB103/562; Richard Aldrich, ‘Policing the past: official history, secrecy and British intelligence since 1945’, English Historical Review, CXIX (2004), 935–9, 951.
2. S. Wilson to J. Nunn, 31 Jan. 1967, CAB103/621; Donald C. Watt, ‘Contemporary history: problems and perspectives’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, III (1965–69), 512; Hay, ‘British historians’, p. 39.
3. Jeffrey Grey, ‘Introduction’, in J. Grey (ed.), The Last Word?: Essays on Official History in the United States and British Commonwealth (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), p. ix.
4. Brook to Heads of Departments, 5 Dec. 1957, CAB103/562. On Brook, see Kevin Theakston, Leadership in Whitehall (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 95–126.
5. Hancock to Gowing, 14 Nov. 1986, Hancock to Richard A. Chapman, 29 May 1985, MG Corresp. Hancock; W.K. Hancock, Country and Calling (London: Faber and Faber, 1954), pp. 196–7. Henceforth Professor Sir Keith Hancock will be referred to as ‘Keith Hancock’ to avoid confusion with ‘David Hancock’.