Up from the Country: Cabinet Office Impressions 1972–1975 1

I was once a modern Dick Whittington, travelling to London to explore its mysteries — though without a black cat, and not on foot. I was summoned from my provincial civil service department to be the Secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in the Cabinet Office from 1972 to 1975. My contacts there with the heart of government were intermittent and tenuous; in the cricketing metaphor, I was lucky to get a touch. Yet, like Dick Whittington, I was an impressionable innocent. Recollections of the milieu may be of interest.