Cabinet Secretaries who served prime ministers in Downing Street from Thatcher to Cameron give a unique insight into their time in office in a series of films produced by university students in London’s East End.
The films have been uploaded onto a new website by Queen Mary University of London’s Mile End Group.
Five former cabinet secretaries have come out from behind the scenes of Whitehall and are in the public spotlight for the first time.
Robert Armstrong, Robin Butler, Richard Wilson, Andrew Turnbull and Gus O’Donnell were ‘grilled’ about their roles by the college’s Attlee Professor of contemporary British History, Lord Hennessy, and by political historian and commentator Anthony Seldon.
“Cabinet secretaries have discretion built into the calcium of their bones,” said Lord Hennessy. “So a chance to talk to them ‘on the record’ about their special calling is to be savoured.”
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