Showing posts with label The National Archives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The National Archives. Show all posts

24 May 2013

Newly Opened files at the National Archives reveal drunken meetings, cross dressing and surveillance

There are some wonderful blog posts coming out of the National Archives material at the moment. Previously secret files have been opened and revealed some very interesting meetings!

From itv

"‘There I found Winston and Stalin, and Molotov who has joined them, sitting with a heavily-laden board between them: food of all kinds crowned by a sucking [sic] pig, and innumerable bottles. What Stalin made me drink seemed pretty savage: Winston, who by that time was complaining of a slight headache, seemed wisely to be confining himself to a comparatively innocuous effervescent Caucasian red wine. Everyone seemed to be as merry as a marriage bell’."

The papers have also exposed the bugging of Edward VIII in the period before his abdications exposing a 'serious breakdown in trust' between himself and his ministers.

In addition, the National Archives have posted some photographs of intelligence officer Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke dressed as both a man and a woman taken by the Spanish police. The Lieutenant was fined by the Spanish police and hurried back to Gibraltar by Churchill.


From itv



Read more here.

29 Oct 2012

The 'Real' James Bond: the Cold War MI5 Diaries Released

To coincide with the release of the new James Bond film "Skyfall" the National Archives Blog features a post concerning the ‘real’ James Bond and the MI5 Diaries which are available for a limited time to download for free.

The candidate for the 'real' James Bond is "Forest Yeo-Thomas, a Second World War secret agent, codenamed ‘White Rabbit’, whose Special Operations Executive file was released to The National Archives in 2003."

"The latest collection of Security Service (MI5) files are made public today and the undoubted highlights are the ten personal diaries of Guy Liddell, Deputy Director General of MI5 during the early Cold War.
Liddell dictated his personal thoughts on the day’s events to a secretary every evening and the pages of tightly-typed notes make fascinating reading."
You can download the files from their website free for one month.