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Alesia Tsiulkova alesiastyl457c — Hennessy's book is a wealth of analysis of recently declassified documents that centre on the British government's plans for what would happen if World War III actually had come to pass during the Cold War. This topic is always a tricky one for historians to tackle, because too many viewings of Dr Strangelove tend to burn a misleading image in the mind, the image of balding men in suits and cigar-chomping generals sitting round a table in the War Room, looking at the Big Board and listening to some scientist with a German accent talk about mineshaft gaps and having ten women to every man. The Secret State manages to present a story that keeps Strangelove in mind, but also manages to keep the pathetically human element in mind. One's stomach wrenches at the mental image of some unfortunate soul who had joined the Civil Service during WWII -- who might very well have read Classics at Oxford -- trying to come to terms with the very real possibility of leaving his family behind to face nuclear destruction in while he followed the Prime Minister into the Cabinet bunker in the Cotswolds. The Secret State touches upon a number of fascinating subjects in its 250-odd pages. The Cabinet reaction to the growing atomic rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union is engrossing, particularly the famous statement by Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin in 1946 that Britain could not fall behind in the acquisition and development of nuclear weapons -- 'We've got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs. We've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.' ('A Bloody Union Jack on Top of It' was later the title of a BBC Radio 4 documentary on the subject of Britain's nuclear arsenal.) Hennessy also includes several copies of actual Civil Service documents about planning for nuclear attack, and a series of photographs of his visit to the real Cold War bunker in the Cotswolds -- including a picture of himself going through the turnstile leading down to the shelters. (The plan to evacuate the Prime Minister and the War Cabinet to the bunker was at one point codenamed 'TURNSTILE'.) The anecdote that got a bitter laugh out of me was the proposed plan to save the Queen from the nuclear devastation by putting her on Britannia, the royal yacht, and having it set out to sea until it was safe for her to return...presumably to what was left of her shattered country. The Secret State made me shiver because looking back on this time period, there's something sad and horrible and terribly futile about the whole era of the high Cold War, something that in my opinion is all too often overshadowed by the image of Peter Sellers attempting to prevent his right arm from giving the Nazi salute.