Thanks for the kind words Helena – as a matter of fact the FOI request was finally approved late November and the document was unsealed (barring a couple of pages which were mysteriously redacted) so I paid 40 pounds or so for the National Archives to scan the document and send to me (since I’m not in the UK). I’ve been travelling for work so haven’t had a chance to do a proper update to everything, mostly been trying to work out how I will structure Episode 5 (it will be subdivided into multiple sections/videos just for length, as is not surprising these days).

There was some interesting stuff in there actually about the demise of the crown process which confirmed things that were vague or unclear in other places I had seen them referenced. I’ll go into it more in the context of the episode but I’m glad I chased it up in the end.

I’m not sure what was on those two redacted pages but I would guess I’ll never see those, seems like they’re using some kind of GDPR type excuse re: personal info but I haven’t looked into it properly.

Interesting that for a document that was supposed to be sealed for many years to come, they decided to just unseal it for everyone at this point rather than just granting me access. It would make me wonder if anyone had even bothered requesting access since it was sealed back decades ago (David Torrance the guy who writes the House of Commons briefing documents presumably has his own backchannel access to these documents).

Glad to hear you found the behind the scenes video interesting, I’ll have to do an update soon since I have a better sense of how this is going to more forwards now.

Alex