A collection of papers based on History & Policy’s recent seminar series in partnership with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Historians on official history has been published in a special edition of the refereed journal ‘Diplomacy and Statecraft’ (vol 36, no 3, 2025). Edited by Patrick Salmon and Richard Smith, the edition, entitled ‘Official History: writing the history of military operations and intelligence’ covers a range of military, intelligence and foreign policy-related issues. Together, the articles – many of which are available on open access – offer an important overview of the strengths and weaknesses of official history as a form of historical scholarship.
The contents are as follows:
Patrick Salmon & Richard Smith, ‘Introduction’
Sir Lawrence Freedman, ‘Taking Stock of Official History, Past, Present and Future: Reflections of an Official Historian’
Matthew S. Seligmann, ‘Commissioning Official History versus Paying for Official History’
Edward Hampshire, ‘Staff Histories and Popular Histories: The Admiralty’s Accounts of the Second World War at Sea’
Pragya Dhital, ‘An Untidy Tapestry of Texts: Secret Diaries of Special Operations in Occupied Burma and the British Official History of World War II’
Declan O’Reilly, ‘Politics and the History of British Intelligence in the Second World War, 1969–1990’
Christopher Baxter & Mark Seaman, ‘‘Utterly Unrestricted Access’: Some Personal Thoughts on the Writing of the Authorised History of the Secret Intelligence Service’
Tony Comer, ‘Behind the Enigma: How GCHQ’s Authorised History Appeared’
Gill Bennett, ‘Travels in the Missing Dimension: Official History and Secret Intelligence’
Mark Seaman, ‘Some Thoughts on the Official Histories of the Special Operations Executive’
Roderick Bailey, ‘On Writing an Official History of SOE in Italy’
John Peaty, ‘SOE in France: Revisited’
