The Culture of Secrecy is the first comprehensive study of the restriction of official information in modern British history. It seeks to understand why secrets have been kept, and how systems of control have been constructed - and challenged - over the past hundred and sixty years. The author transcends the conventional boundaries of political or social history in his wide-ranging diagnosis of the `British disease' - the legal forms and habits of mind which together have constituted the national tradition of discreet reserve. The chapters range across bureaucrats and ballots, gossip and gay rights, doctors and dole investigators in their exploration of the ethical basis of power in the public, professional, commercial and domestic spheres. Professor Vincent examines concepts such as privacy and confidentiality, honour and integrity, openness and freedom of expression, which have served as benchmarks in the development of the liberal state and society.

This is the best book ever written on the history of official secrecy in Britian ... it ranges much wider than the Whitehall machine and investigates secrecy in other areas of British public life. It is this aspect of David Vincent's work that provides a range of perspective that is so often missing from other accounts of secrecy. * Clive Ponting, THES 3/3/00 *

David Vincent is Professor of Social History and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Keele.