09 Oct 2013 05:16:50
Some are hauntingly serious. Sir James Chadwick, Nobel prize-winner, reports back to the War Office as the first atomic bomb is tested in New Mexico. "I am filled with awe when I look back on this moment. It was a vision from the Book of Revelations."
The ironing board in question was a £19 number that Mrs T thought far too expensive when moved into No 10 for her personal use in 1979. Thatcher's strops over small things parade through these pages. But if there's a real star surfacing anew from the dust of Kew it's surely Harold Wilson, a natural acid wit who needed no help in writing his own scripts. How do you rescue a hostage from the clutches of Idi Amin? Maybe get the moderator of the Church of Scotland to send him a message. And how to reassure the Queen when that "well-known nutter" Willie Hamilton MP does a republican rant? "Mr Hamilton is past praying for."
Some modern mysteries are finally unravelled. It was Wilson who told Prince Charles to take up his personal beefs with ministers, rather than make speeches about them. A cross born to this day. And if you want to know how to build a new London airport follow the Heathrow example: lay down your runways in wartime, with no planning permission whatsoever. But basically, and irresistibly, we're invited to look back and laugh. This is the way the Whitehall world ends: not with a bang, but a giggle.
