ABSTRACT
In early 1974, at the height of Britain’s worst peacetime crisis, on the eve of an all-out miners’ strike, the nation’s top mandarin, Sir William Armstrong, was preparing for the end of the world. According to the great Whitehall historian Peter Hennessy, Sir William’s ‘influence was quite extraordinary for a civil servant’. Assertive and articulate, he always gave frank and fearless advice to the Prime Minister Edward Heath. Now he was ready to do so again. The term ‘mandarin’ has a rich etymological history, which author cherish. It is a word, borrowed from the Malay by the Portuguese during their colonial presence in the Malacca Sultanate. It has its roots in the Sanskrit verb, ‘to think’. The word was employed by the Portuguese to describe the Chinese high officials with whom they had contact.
