
Palace of Dreams
Michael Cockerell uncovers the secret world of the Foreign Office, blending new footage with rare archive and interviews with present and past foreign secretaries.
Three-part series in which award-winning reporter Michael Cockerell uncovers the secret world of Whitehall, showing what the trio of great offices - ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, Foreign and Treasury - are really like.
The Foreign Office is the grandest of the three, built in Victorian times to impress foreigners when the British lion still strutted the globe. How the Foreign Office has sought over the years to come to terms with Britain's reduced status in the world makes an often tragicomic tale.
Cockerell blends fresh access filming, rare and previously unseen archive and interviews with past and present foreign secretaries and their normally camera-shy senior officials. The film tells of the many behind-the-scenes battles in the FO between its mandarins and ministers and against 10 Downing Street.
Successive prime ministers have regarded the Foreign Office as temperamentally inclined to kow-tow to foreigners and have sought to be their own foreign secretaries - often with disastrous consequences. The film also explores the always-uneasy relationship between the FO and its offshoot, Britain's spy agency, MI6.
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Credits
Role | Contributor |
---|---|
Presenter | Michael Cockerell |
Reporter | Michael Cockerell |
Producer | Michael Cockerell |
Director | James Giles |
Executive Producer | Martin Wilson |
Broadcasts
- Thu 18 Feb 2010 21:00
- Fri 19 Feb 2010 03:25
- Sun 21 Feb 2010 20:00
- Mon 22 Feb 2010 01:15
- Sat 27 Mar 2010 19:30
- Tue 30 Mar 2010 03:55
- Fri 7 May 2010 21:00
- Mon 31 May 2010 21:30
- Thu 3 Mar 2011 02:10