Written by BBC R4
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Episode 1 - One Hundred Years of Secrecy (16 August 2011)
Kicking off Radio 4's Secret Britain series, Peter Hennessy, the leading Whitehall-watcher, tells the story of the Official Secrets Act and explores the tension between Britain's culture of state secrecy and more open government.

One hundred years ago, in the hot summer of 1911, Asquith's Government exploited a scare about German spies and a panic over a German gunboat in a Moroccan port to rush a new Official Secrets Act through parliament. The measure was presented as being necessary for national security, but ministers seized their opportunity to extend the law much further. The Act included a 'catch-all' section that forbade the unauthorized disclosure of anything about the government's work, including innocuous matters that posed no possible threat to national security.

Peter Hennessy explains why Britain developed a culture of state secrecy and shows how politicians kept politically inconvenient information secret. He examines how reform of official secrets eventually came and explores the tension between the competing needs for secrecy that protects national security and more openness in a democracy.

Producer: Rob Shepherd.

Episode 2 - D for Discretion - Can the Modern Media Keep a Secret (23 August 2011)
Twice a year, over tea and biscuits at the Ministry of Defence, senior media editors meet senior civil servants to talk about what should be kept secret in the military, intelligence and counter-terrorism worlds. Originally known as the D-Notice Committee, it's been in existence for nearly a century. It started out dominated by newspaper proprietors, now though even Google is a member. In D for Discretion Naomi Grimley asks where does the public's right to know end and the state secret start? And can the media even be trusted to keep such secrets in the internet age?

In the early days the remit of the D-Notice Committee was wide. Newspapers, for example, weren't supposed to make any mention of Rasputin and his relationship with "the highest personage in Russia". Nowadays, though, the system is supposed to be used only in the most serious cases when national security may be at stake.

The "Defence Advisory Notice System" - as it is now called - is supposed to be entirely voluntary. In reality, though, it's very rare for any of the mainstream media organisations to ignore the committee's requests. But how does this work in the age of Wikileaks and citizen journalism? This programme looks at the challenges to the system posed by social media websites. What happens if members of the public try to reveal government secrets on Twitter - in a similar way to this year's row about super-injunctions? And how do newspapers like The Guardian square their Wikileaks collaborations with their own editorial guidelines on national security issues?

Produced by Alicia Trujillo.

Episode 3 - Living With Secrets (30 August 2011)
As part of Radio 4's Secret Britain series, Peter Taylor meets people who keep or have kept the darkest state secrets, to hear how it feels to live a life in the shadows:

The Derry family who put their lives on the line for peace; the Muslim agent who spies on Islamist extremists; the mandarin charged with guarding Britain's secrets; and the Special Branch officer who infiltrated subversive revolutionary groups.