ABSTRACT
This book is not intended to be the definitive history of the idea of public service. Neither is it a social science investigation into whether current public servants are motivated by that idea. Rather, it is a personal exploration of the idea by way both of an examination of some of the key contributors to the development of ideas of public service as understood in the context of the higher civil service in Britain and a discussion of some recent trends in administrative practice in the United Kingdom. It is not an exhaustive literature survey, nor is it an objective assessment. It is intended both to be controversial and stimulating and add to our understanding of public administration in Britain. In part it may be regarded as polemical, in the same way as was Brian Chapman’s excellent but maligned book British Government Observed (1963). The book eschews the jargon that mars so much contemporary social science writing and in the sense that it presents no new ‘scientific’ theories, or typologies or models or other heuristic devices, it is in part a contribution to the literature from what Jeroen Maesschalk refers to as the ‘Traditional Public Administration’ perspective (Maesschalk, 2004, p. 466). As the title of the book suggests, it simply presents some reflections on the skills, approaches and values of senior civil servants in Britain.
