Dimensions
139 x 223 x 27mm
From the author of the bestselling The First Fifty Years of Private Eye comes a collection of state secrets that those in power might have preferred to go unnoticed. . .
Noted down, stamped 'secret' and filed away for decades. . . The Prime Minister's Ironing Board and Other State Secrets reveals what really went on in the corridors of power. Stored in Whitehall's archives is everything from blood-chilling warnings of imminent nuclear attack to a miscellany of daily life in Downing Street. Eyewitness accounts of the first atomic bomb are shelved alongside worries about housemaids 'on the wobble' at Chequers. Detailed plans for royal funerals sit beside reports on suspected spies in the showbiz world and lists of the monkeys on the Rock of Gibraltar. And Mary Whitehouse's complaints about the sex education syllabus nestle next to Prince Charles's letters to ministers and thank-you notes from prisoner 13260/62, also known as Nelson Mandela.
Adam Macqueen, author of the highly acclaimed bestseller Private Eye: The First 50 Years, has searched high and low to present us with the most jaw-dropping revelations from the last century in inimitable style. Not only about Mrs Thatcher's ironing board, but Ted Heath's car, Harold Macmillan's bedroom carpet, the desperate efforts in Number 10 to avoid a visit from President Nixon and the particular problem President Eisenhower had with Winston Churchill's trousers.