2. What types of records does The National Archives hold?

We hold:

• selected lists of war criminals and individual case files
• documentation relating to administration and policy

The records we hold mainly relate to:

• investigations and trials in Europe and the Far East
• the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), whose role was to record and investigate war crimes and to advise governments on legal procedures for bringing suspects to trial
• the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects (CROWCASS), which assisted the UNWCC and allied governments in tracing ex-enemy nationals suspected of committing war crimes or atrocities in Europe
• the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg

3. How to search for war crimes records at The National Archives

The best way to start is to search Discovery, our catalogue using keywords such as:

• war crimes
• war criminal
• Nuremberg trials
• United Nations War Crimes Commission or UNWCC
• Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects or CROWCASS

Many war crimes records originated in the Foreign Office or the War Office, so you can refine your search to these collections, which have the letter codes FO and WO.

Not all relevant records will come up in an online search. In particular, Foreign Office political correspondence in FO 371 contains a lot of information about war crimes as does FO 1060 for ‘minor’ war crimes in the records of the legal division of the Control Commission for Germany, but our catalogue does not provide full details.

To find out more about the contents of FO 371 in the period 1920-1951, use the printed index in the reading rooms at The National Archives at Kew, and look under the general heading ‘War Criminals’.

4. Investigations and trials in Europe and the Far East

4.1 Europe

Search our catalogue for:

• case files of the War Crimes Group (NW Europe) name within WO 309. These cover both individual cases and general procedural policy
• quarterly historical reports of the War Crimes Investigation Unit within WO 267
• policy papers in WO 32
• references to trials and investigations in WO 208 and FO 1060. Use keywords such as ‘war crimes’
• documentation on the prosecution of war criminals within WO 204. Use keywords such as ‘war crimes’. This series also contains policy papers concerning crimes committed by or against Italians
• lists of war criminals (alleged or proved) in TS 26. Use keywords such as ‘war criminal’. The list provides brief details of the crime(s). This series also contains a sample of lists of charges prepared against Germans and Italians in connection with war crimes investigations in TS 26/176-802
• case files of the War Crimes Group (SE Europe) in WO 310. Most of these files concern investigations in Austria and Italy, Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia
• the Control Commission for Germany and Austria in FO 1060 and FO 1020 respectively
• files of the War Crimes Investigation Branch, HQ Allied Land Forces Norway in WO 331
• investigations and prosecutions in WO 311, WO 353 and WO 355
• reports of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) courts of enquiry in WO 219/5045-5054. Reports cover alleged atrocities committed against Allied prisoners of war by the German armed forces
• records of proceedings in British military courts in WO 235
• records of the Ravensbrück war crime trials in RW 2

4.2 The Far East

Search our catalogue for:

• individual cases in WO 203 by keywords such as ‘investigation’ or ‘trial’
• files concerning ALFSEA’s investigations into war crimes in WO 325
• reports of Far East Land Forces investigation teams in WO 203. Use keywords such as ‘war crimes’
• card indexes concerning investigations and trials in South East Asia. Search by name of accused or victim in WO 356
• files of the Judge Advocate General’s Military Department in WO 311
• investigations in WO 357
• war crimes papers in WO 235/813-1117
• correspondence on the setting up of the IMT Tokyo in FO 371/57422-57429

5. International Military tribunal (IMT), Nuremberg

Read our research guide to Cabinet and its committees for advice on searching our catalogue for cabinet papers. These include cabinet minutes and memoranda for the Second World War and post-war periods (CAB 65, CAB 66, CAB 128, CAB 129).

You can view some of the Nuremberg trial documentation at The Avalon Project and the Nuremberg Trial Project.

Search our catalogue for:

• Foreign Office records relating to the trials in FO 1049, FO 945 and FO 1060
• records of the British War Crimes Executive, Court Contact Committee and documents submitted on behalf of defendants, and correspondence from the public in FO 1019
• Policy discussions in PREM 4 and PREM 8
• Transcript minutes of the Nuremberg trial proceedings in FO 371/57435-57517

Consult the printed index to General Correspondence of the Foreign Office, 1920-1951 at The National Archives under the heading ‘War crimes: German (Nuremberg trials)’ to identify records within FO 371.

6. Records held in other archives

Contact the Imperial War Museum Archive for selected records of war crime trials of Europe (such as the Nuremburg trials) and the Far East.

For records of the UNWCC, its sub-commissions and committees contact the United Nations Archives.

7. Further reading

Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (42 vols, Nuremberg: IMT, 1947-49)

The Tokyo War Crimes Trials. The Complete Transcripts of the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, ed RJ Pritchard and SM Zaide (22 vols, New York: Garland, 1981)

2. British Army structure

During the First World War, the British Army was divided into a complicated hierarchical structure of numerous units and sub-units. The structure, down to battalion level, was as follows:

1. General Headquarters/British Expeditionary Force (BEF)

2. Army (Western Front only; by October 1916 the BEF consisted of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Armies)

3. Corps (consisted of two or more divisions)

4. Division (consisted of three or four regiments/brigades)

5. Regiment/Brigade (regiments consisted of two or more battalions; brigades consisted of four or more battalions from different regiments)

6. Battalion (usually 300-1300 soldiers)

3. How to conduct a general search

You can search Discovery, our catalogue, using keywords.

Not all of the records have been catalogued in detail, and many cannot be viewed online. To view records which are not online you will need to visit The National Archives at Kew or pay for research.

Many army units have been catalogued using abbreviations (for example, ‘Fd. Regt.’ instead of ‘Field Regiment’), so you may have to experiment with different search terms and formats.

However, keyword searching can be a good way to begin. Try searching by:

• name of battle (for example, ‘Somme’)
• name of operation or campaign (for example, ‘Gallipoli Campaign’)
• name of a theatre of war (for example, ‘Western Front’ or ‘Dardanelles’)
• name of army unit – try different formats (for example, ‘Royal Field Artillery’ or ‘RFA’)

Restrict your search to the appropriate date range and search within reference WO.

Consult the Dictionary of military and technological abbreviations and acronyms (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983) by Bernhard Pretz for help with deciphering the text in some operations records, particularly unit war diaries.

For further general guidance, consult The First World War: the Essential Guide to Sources in the UK National Archives by IFW Beckett (Public Record Office, 2002).

4. Unit war diaries 1914-1922

First World War unit war diaries cover the hostilities as well as some post-war operations, including the Army of Occupation.

They were kept by:

• British, Dominion, Indian and Colonial units in the United Kingdom, France, Flanders, Italy, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Salonika and Russia
• the Royal Flying Corps
• specialist units, such as military hospitals

You may be able to find unit war diaries for Commonwealth countries (such as Canada, New Zealand or South Africa) and former colonial forces serving in the British Army such as the units of the West African Field Force, British West Indies Regiment and the West India Regiment.

4.1 All units except Royal Flying Corps

Many of the unit war diaries in series WO 95 have been digitised. For more information and instructions on how to search, see our guide to British Army war diaries 1914-1922. If you are looking for the unit war diaries of Gallipoli and the Dardanelles campaign (WO 95/4263-4359) then these are available via Ancestry (£).

Alternatively, use our catalogue to search the entire collection, including those diaries that have not been digitised. Use all or part of the regiment or unit name and battalion number (15, not 15th) as keywords, restricting your search to reference WO 95.

If you can’t find the diary you’re looking for in WO 95, try a search in WO 154, a series containing information on courts martial extracted from WO 95.

In most cases, there are copies of diaries with the regiments themselves or in regimental museums. Use Find an archive to find a regimental museum.

4.2 Royal Flying Corps

Search our catalogue, searching within AIR 20 or AIR 1, for Royal Flying Corps unit war diaries. Your search terms should take one of the following formats:

• a squadron or wing number AND “R.F.C.”
• a squadron number AND “Royal Flying Corps”

For further information and search tips about war diaries see our webinar on Tracing British battalions or regiments during the First World War.

5. Records of Cabinet

To find records of the Cabinet Office, search our catalogue restricted to the department CAB and the relevant year range. Our research guide Cabinet and its committees gives more guidance.

The records include:

• drafts of official war histories and narratives in CAB 44
• correspondence, maps, papers, personal accounts, photographs and private war diaries used to prepare official war histories in CAB 45
• information on the East Africa campaign and other documents used to prepare official histories in CAB 103

The archived Cabinet Papers site has themed pages on war, the empire and diplomacy, which you can browse, some with links to downloadable documents.

6. Other operational records

There are numerous other records series that contain details of First World War operations and campaigns. Some of the most significant are:

• correspondence and papers of military headquarters in WO 158
• miscellaneous papers including short histories of the campaigns in Russia and the Dardenelles in WO 161
• intelligence summaries in WO 157
• photographs of Gallipoli, Palestine, and Italian Campaigns in WO 317, WO 319 and WO 323

There are other records series which cover a broader range of years and subjects and contain details of First World War operations. Use the advanced search option in our catalogue to search within one or all of the following references:

• WO 32
• WO 33
• WO 106

You can also browse these series in our catalogue. Please be aware that this may prove time consuming as they are very large.

For advice on map collections, see our Military maps of the First World War research guide.

7. Orders of Battle and deployment of units

Published in several volumes, the Order of Battle of Divisions list month by month the location of each unit, and the division or army to which they were attached. They are arranged by division (not by regiment).

Similarly, within WO 95 are several sets of files covering orders of battle, British military missions and deployment of units.

The paper version of the catalogue for WO 95, in the reading rooms at The National Archives at Kew, is accompanied by separate indexes which provide details of the allocation of battalions to fields of battle as well as their reallocation from one brigade or division to another.

8. Parliamentary records

Discussions in Parliament on army operations can be found in Hansard, which is available online on the Parliament website. Please note there are some volumes missing from the online data.

Other relevant records may be found in published Parliamentary papers. You can access these online via Proquest UK Parliamentary Papers. This is a subscription website you can access on The National Archives computers by visiting us at Kew. You may also be able to access it via a large reference library such as a university library. 

The personal political papers of David Lloyd George contain a large amount of material relating to First World War operations. See our separate research guide on Lloyd George papers. 

9. Further reading

Visit The National Archives bookshop for a range of publications on British Army operations in the First World War. You can also search The National Archives’ library catalogue to see what is available to consult at Kew.

M Brown, The Imperial War Museum book of the First World War; a great conflict recalled in previously unpublished letters, diaries, documents and memoirs (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1991)

Peter Chasseaud, Topography of Armageddon: a British trench map atlas of the Western Front, 1914-1918 (Mapbooks, 1991)

Douglas Haig, Douglas Haig: War diaries and letters, ed. Gary Sheffield and John Bourne (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005)

Alfred Chevallier Parker, The diaries of Parker Pasha, ed. H V F Winstone (Quartet Books, 1983)

William Spencer, First World War Army Service Records (The National Archives, 2008)

Robert Alan Watson, War Diaries of John Alan Watson RGA: 13th Siege Battery April 1915 – October 1915, 76th Siege Battery April 1916-December 1916 (1994)

4. Pre 1535

An act of 1535/6 (27 Henry VIII) marks a significant change in the workings of the court (see below under Criminal) and documents prior to this date are considered here separately. One of the earliest and best known of these is the Black Book of the Admiralty, or ‘Liber Niger Admiralitatis’ of around 1450 (HCA 12/1). This was transcribed between 1871 and 1876 by Sir Travers Twiss. The Black Book was thought at the time to be lost, and Twiss worked from related manuscripts and transcripts. Of the four volumes of Twiss’s work at The National Archives, only the first and fourth relate to the Black Book. Vol I pp 1-344 contains the transcripts, and Vol IV contains minor corrections made after the original was found. The languages used can be dual text (pages side by side) in Old French and contemporary English, Latin alone, French alone or English alone. Each volume is indexed by person, place and subject. Other records from before 1535 are not numerous, but include:

5. Criminal

The act referred to above (27 Hen VIII c 4, 5), ‘An Act concerning Pirates and Robbers of the Sea’, and the very similar act of the following year (28 Hen VIII c 15), ‘An Act for Punishment of Pirates and Robbers of the Sea’, attempted to correct the shortcomings of the civil law in the prosecution of piracy, ‘treasons, felonies, robberies, murders and confederacies’.

Under civil law, the sentence of death could not be given unless the defendant confessed or there were witnesses, and witnesses were hard to assemble because by the nature of their calling, seamen were nearly always away at sea. The acts provided for such offences to be dealt with ‘in such like manner and form as if such offences had been committed upon the land’, in other words, under common law. Benefit of clergy was also withdrawn. The most common categories of offence are piracy, treason, murder, mutiny, desertion, sodomy, insurance fraud, rape, robbery (sometimes difficult to distinguish from piracy) and (after 1807) slaving.

The proceedings are to be found in HCA 1. Discovery, our catalogue, like the paper list from which it derives, largely lists the documents by type, for example, Proclamations of Sessions, Jury Precepts and so on. A relatively modern calendar and index is available at The National Archives. A key at the front of the paper series list records which pieces are searchable by name of person, name of ship. This may be summarized as follows:

Those marked with an asterisk represent the most straightforward way of finding a person or ship. The index and calendar to HCA 1/1-101 is available at The National Archives.

6. Prize

The business of the High Court of Admiralty, aside from the criminal cases above, was administered under civil law and divided into prize jurisdiction and instance jurisdiction (for the latter see below). The Prize Court ruled on disputed prize cases and either condemned the ship, cargo or both as lawful prize or found in favour of the owners of the prize as neutral or friendly, and therefore ‘not lawful prize’.

Records of prize cases are found in these series:

Of these, HCA 32 is by far the most useful and the easiest to access if you have the name of the ship and an approximate date.

All the papers after 1700 are catalogued by at least name of ship and master: those for the 1740s have been fully catalogued as part of the Prize Papers Project (see www.prizepapers.de).

There is a comprehensive guide to the series in the introductory note preceding the paper catalogue. The papers relating to each ship usually comprise Court Papers, being those produced for or by the Court, and Ship’s Papers, those impounded at the ship’s capture, to prove nationality. Some ships were also carrying mail in transit for delivery.  By their nature, the documents are usually in foreign languages, predominantly French, Spanish, Dutch, but with at least 15 other languages also found.

The following table shows the arrangement of the series HCA 32: work on improving cataloguing of this and separated collections of ships’ papers and mail in transit in HCA 30 has been ongoing since 2013. Droits of Admiralty in Prize are rights to ships seized in port, or to enemy ships taken without proper authorisation.

7. Instance

Instance jurisdiction, as opposed to prize jurisdiction (see above), covers commercial disputes, disputes over wages, collisions, pilotage, salvage and droits. Droits of Admiralty are rights or perquisites, such as the proceeds arising from the seizure of enemies’ ships, wrecks, flotsam, jetsam and so on. Instance records and their means of reference are as follows:

These IND 1 volumes are available in the reading room at The National Archives.

Indexes to instance cases can also be found at HCA 56/1-61 for 1875-1946, at HCA 56/62 for 1860-1866, and at HCA 56/63-64 for 1772-1839.

8. Vice-Admiralty

Until 1835 there were local courts of admiralty in the maritime counties, and records relating to these are to be found in ADM 1 and HCA 49. However, the majority of Vice-Admiralty records relate to courts in colonial possessions, the proceedings of which are to be found in HCA 49. The arrangement is by colony beneath which the arrangement is usually roughly chronological. Other records relating to Vice-Admiralty courts are in:

• ADM 1
• HCA 1
• HCA 5
• HCA 13
• HCA 30
• HCA 32
• HCA 35
• HCA 50

By no means were all the records generated by these courts forwarded to the Admiralty in London and so many were never transferred to The National Archives.

9. Slave trade

In 1807 the slave trade was abolished in all British possessions and from 1808 many examples of the navy’s enforcement of this are to be found, especially in HCA 49/97, cases adjudicated in the court of vice-admiralty for Sierra Leone.

In 1821 William Rothery was appointed by the treasury to report on all cases involving slavery in admiralty, vice-admiralty and mixed commission (held jointly with representatives of the other country involved) courts. In 1860 he was succeeded by his son Henry, who remained in the post until 1888, by which time the work was greatly diminished. Their reports are to be found in HCA 35, 1821-1891.

10. Appeals

Appeals in prize cases went to the Commission of Appeals in Prize, also known as the High Court of Appeal for Prizes. (But there are some prize papers in DEL 2). The documents can be found in:

Appeals in instance cases, together with those from ecclesiastical and other civilian courts, went to the Court of Delegates until 1834. The documents can be found in:

From 1834 onwards appeals were heard by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and are to be found in the PCAP series.

11. Other finding aids and indexes

An index of cases (prize and instance together) for the limited period 1515-1551 relates to and cross-refers:

Select Pleas in the Court of Admiralty, Reginald Marsden, Selden Society Vol. XI gives selected pleadings in the HCA from 1390-1602. In this volume the file number translates to the piece number in HCA 24.

12. Glossary

4. Parliamentary papers

Proquest UK Parliamentary Papers is a subscription website you can access on The National Archives’ computers by visiting us at Kew. You may also be able to access it via a large reference library such as a university library. You can:

• search for papers using the paper number and the year
• browse by century, year and volume
• browse the 19th century subject catalogue – for instance health and housing; public health and sanitation; infectious diseases; cholera

Where parliamentary papers are mentioned in this guide we will mention the year, volume number and sometimes paper number.

Discussions in Parliament can be found in Hansard, which is available online on the Parliament website. Please note there are some volumes missing from the online data.

5. Board of Health 1805-1806 and 1831-1832

5.1 The first Board of Health

In February 1805 the Privy Council set up the Board of Health to give advice on preventing the spread of a fever from Spain and Gibraltar to Britain. The Board met until August 1806.

Most Board of Health papers are in record series PC 1. To locate relevant documents references try searching the catalogue within this record series using keywords such as ‘board of health’.

Reports from the board are in PC 1/3637 and PC 1/3666 and reports to the Board on foreign epidemics are in MH 98/1.

5.2 The second Board of Health

The early 1830s saw the following activity prompted by the threat of a cholera epidemic:

• June 1831: consultative Board of Health set up
• 25 October 1831: regulations to prevent the spread of cholera published in the London Gazette, available on The Gazette website
• November 1831: Central Board of Health established and local boards began to be set up. Surviving records are held in local record offices
• December 1832: Central Board was dissolved and local boards disappeared as cholera epidemic receded

Use keywords to search our catalogue within department reference PC to find useful records. Some key records for research in this area are:

• minutes of the consultative board in PC 1/101 and HO 31/17
• minutes of the Central board in PC 1/105
• letter books in PC 1/93-100
• list of local health boards in PC 1/102
• correspondence and miscellaneous papers in PC 1/102-114
• correspondence and reports relating to quarantine in PC 1/2660-2662 and PC 1/4395

6. Poor Law Commissioner’s surveys 1838-1842

The Poor Law Commission organised two surveys of the sanitary conditions of the poor in east London, one in 1838 and another in 1842.

The first survey was at the request of Edwin Chadwick, a Poor Law Commissioner, and was published in the annual report of the Poor Law Commissioners 1838 (Parliamentary paper number 147; 1837-8 vol xxvii)

The second survey was more extensive and was carried out by assistant commissioners with a report published under Chadwick’s name in 1842. Some key records relating to this survey are

• original survey returns in MH 32 and MH 12
• registers of correspondence between Commission and inspectors in MH 33
• William Day’s synopsis of reports on housing conditions in North Wales in MH 32/16
• correspondence from assistant commissioners Day and Gilbert in MH 33/2

7. Health of Towns Commission 1843

As a result of the 1842 Poor Law Commissioners report, the Royal Commission on the Health of Towns was appointed in 1843 to investigate the sanitary arrangements of 50 English towns. Its findings resulted in the Public Health Act in 1848.

The Commission’s minute book is in MH 7/1 and its report was printed for parliament (Parliamentary papers number 572; 1844 vol xvii and number 602; 1845 vol xviii)

8. General Board of Health 1848-1858

The Public Health Act 1848 established the General Board of Health for a period of five years. The Board was reconstituted in 1854 but abolished by the Public Health Act in 1858.

8.1 Local boards of health

The General Board could give permission for local boards of health to be set up. Where the average death rate exceeded 23 per 1000 the General Board could create local boards itself.

Most surviving records of the local boards are in local record offices and some public libraries.

The National Archives has local board sanitary inspection reports for Keswick in PC 1/2665 and Conway in PC 1/2667 as well as a copy of a set of reports (with some additions) on microfiche in PRO 28/125.

8.2 General Board of Health records

Key records relating to the General Board of Health include

• applications to form local boards and general correspondence in HLG 19 and MH 13
•  correspondence and papers on cholera, yellow fever and quarantine in MH 13/245-50
• other correspondence in HLG 1 and HLG 46
• minute books in MH 5 and MH 6
• similar instruments sanctioning borrowing or mortgages by local boards are in HLG 15 with nominal registers in HLG 16
• Bill papers relating to public health and local government legislation are in HLG 29

9. Local Government Act Office and Privy Council Medical Department (from 1858)

In 1858 the General Board of Health’s functions were transferred to the

• Local Government Act Office (part of the Home Office)
• Medical Department of the Privy Council

9.1 Local Government Act Office

Under the Sanitary Acts of 1866-1870, local authorities became responsible for the provision of sewers, water and street cleaning and had to appoint Sanitary Inspectors.

Reports from the Local Government Act Office are in MH 13 and correspondence about them is in HO 45.

9.2 Privy Council Medical Department

Papers relating to and collected by the Medical Officer and inspectors are in record series MH 113 along with copies of some of the Medical Officer’s annual reports.

Proquest UK Parliamentary Papers has a full collection of these reports which provide a picture of the health, social and industrial conditions of the period.

Correspondence from the medical inspectors is in MH 32/105 and MH 32/106.

The few official records that survive from the Privy Council Medical Department are in record series PC 1.

10. Local Government Board 1871

The Local Government Board took on responsibility for local environmental health services from the Local Government Act Office in 1871.

The Public Health Department of the Local Government Board (LGB) dealt with the administrative aspects of public health and vaccinations. Key records relating to the department include:

• correspondence relating to notification of infectious diseases in MH 23
• general correspondence in MH 25
• local authority correspondence and papers in MH 12, MH 30 and MH 48
• departmental correspondence in MH 19

Some records relating to specific diseases are given below:

• cholera MH 19/227-244 and MH 13
• yellow fever MH 19/244-246
• plague MH 19/244, MH 19/247-275
• smallpox MH 19/276
• quarantine regulations MH 19/277-80

When the Ministry of Health was established in 1919 under the Ministry of Health Act, it took on the powers and duties of the Local Government Board, as well as of the National Health Insurance Commissions of England and Wales and of the Privy Council under the Midwives Act.

11. Surveys 1885-1895

Several public health surveys were undertaken by the LGB Medical Inspectorate towards the end of the 19th century:

• cholera in 1885
• port and riparian survey in 1892
• general sanitary survey in 1893-5

The returns of these investigations are among local authority correspondence in record series MH 12.

Search our catalogue within MH 12 using relevant dates and the name of the relevant urban or rural sanitary authority within a given poor law union.

12. Foreign epidemics

Correspondence about foreign epidemics is in MH 98 including:

• information from British consular officials
• statistics concerning mortality and the distribution of disease
• newspaper cuttings and extracts from foreign journals
• correspondence on related subjects such as ship quarantine

Similar material is in:

• the Buchanan Papers in MH 113
• files relating to specific diseases in MH 19
• correspondence from consular officials in Foreign Office General Correspondence series

Foreign Office records of international sanitary conferences include:

• Paris 1851-1853, 1859-1860 in FO 97/210-218
• Constantinople 1865-1867 in FO 78/2005-2008
• Austria 1874 in FO 7/982-983
• Venice 1891-1893 and, 1897 in FO 83/1280-1284, FO 83/1573
• Dresden 1893 in FO 83/1277-1279
• Paris 1893-1894 in FO 83/1329-1331
• Venice 1898 in FO 83/1641
• Paris 1902-1903 in FO 83/2055-2056

Colonial Office original correspondence also contains information about outbreaks of epidemic diseases.

Confidential print (available onsite at Kew and also by subscription through Adam Matthew) and Proquest UK Parliamentary Papers are further sources.

13. Further reading

The following recommended publications are available in The National Archives’ Library.

Anne Digby and John Stewart (eds) ‘Gender, Health and Welfare’ (Routledge, 1996)

Anne Digby, British Welfare Policy. Workhouse to Workfare (Faber and Faber, 1989)

Jane Lewis, ‘Gender, the Family and Women’s Agency in the Building of ‘Welfare States: The British Case’, Social History, 19 (1994)

Dorothy Porter, ‘Health, Civilization and the State: a History of Public Health from Antiquity to Modernity’ (Routledge, 1998)

Pat Thane, Foundations of the Welfare State (Longman, 1996)

2. Getting a search started

As with almost all searches for documents at The National Archives, the best place to begin is in Discovery, our catalogue. A simple search with the keyword ‘propaganda’ will return thousands of search results, each with its own document reference. To narrow a search that returns unmanageable numbers of references you should use the filters on the left-hand side of the search results page to refine your results by ‘Date’ or ‘Collection’. The ‘Collection’ filter will break down your search results by the government departments which created the records. Typically propaganda records were created by the security services, the Foreign Office, branches of the military and the Cabinet Office, among other departments.

Read our research guide to Cabinet and its committees for advice on searching our catalogue for cabinet papers.

The archived Cabinet Papers site has themed pages which you can browse, some with links to downloadable documents.

3. The First World War, 1914-1918

from 1914 to 1916 news, censorship, and propaganda work was carried out by a number of government departments and agencies, often with overlapping activities.

• The War Office Directorate of Military Operations department MI7 and the Admiralty circulated reports and propaganda to the press in military zones. Discussion of propaganda techniques is in INF 4, with examples and descriptions of MI7’s work in INF 4/4B and INF 4/1B.
• The Foreign Office News Department carried out propaganda work abroad. From early 1916 it coordinated the propaganda work of departments in allied and neutral countries. Records for 1914-1915 are in FO 371, and for 1916-1939 in FO 395. There is a card index and registers in FO 566 and FO 662 up to 1920, and after 1920, printed indexes which can all be consulted in the reading rooms of The National Archives at Kew.
• The War Propaganda Bureau produced publications for use in allied and neutral countries
• The Neutral Press Committee was set up as an advisory body in September 1914. It included newspaper proprietors and journalists and later provided information services to the neutral press

In February 1917 these bodies merged, forming the Department of Information, which then became the Ministry of Information in March 1918.

The Political Intelligence Bureau (records in FO 371) had already transferred to the Foreign Office, and the Enemy Propaganda Bureau to Lord Northcliffe’s Crewe House Committee.

From February 1918 the Department of Propaganda in Enemy Countries reported directly to the War Cabinet.

The Ministry took over responsibility for photographs and films from the War Office. Department and Ministry maintained missions abroad. INF 4 contains examples of the files and work of First World War propaganda departments.

4. The inter-war years

In November 1918 the Ministry of Information was dissolved. The Foreign Office News Department regained responsibility for overseas information and publicity (records in FO 395).

A Dominions Information Department was established in 1926 to supply information on foreign policy to the dominions; its records are in FO 372 (1926-1928) and FO 627 (1929-1933). In 1933 it was replaced by the Colonial Office and Dominions Office Public Relations branch (records in FO 372).

Other examples of colonial propaganda may be found in records of the Colonial Office on a country-by-country basis. CO 956 holds copies of posters issued by the Empire Marketing Board, 1927-1933. The Service Departments had set up press offices shortly after the war; DEFE 1 contains examples of work and discussions on propaganda.

From 1934 the British Council fostered educational and cultural links with other countries. Its records are in the BW record series. Records of the British Council section of the Foreign Office are in FO 370. This became the Cultural Relations Department in 1944 (records in FO 924, index in FO 409). The British Council photographic collection is in INF 11. Confidential print relating to cultural propaganda for the inter-war years is in FO 431.

The BBC was encouraged to set up an Empire Service in English in 1932 and a British External Broadcasting Service in 1938. For examples see the BBC Archives.

In 1936 a planning team was set up under the Committee of Imperial Defence to make plans for a Ministry of Information and publicity services in the event of war; papers are in INF 1 and INF 4.

5. The Second World War, 1939-1945

The Ministry of Information (MOI) had responsibility for news and press censorship, home publicity and propaganda in allied and neutral countries from September 1939. The MOI produced regular Home Intelligence Reports. These were surveys of public opinion during wartime – concerning events, policies, reactions to the MOI’s campaigns, and the state of morale. You can search for MOI reports online.

Papers and examples of the work of the MOI are in:

• The Ministry of Information files of correspondence – in INF 1
• Publicity material issued by the Ministry of Information – in INF 2
• A complete set of original artwork – in INF 3 (you can view selected images in The National Archives’ Art of war online exhibition)

A News Division issued material to the home and overseas press, news agencies and the BBC. In allied and neutral countries the MOI was responsible for information policy and publicity, absorbing the Foreign Publicity Department of the Foreign Office. Examples of this work are in FO 898/426, FO 898/486-528 and FO 898/549-553. Publicity files between 1938 and 1947 are in FO 930.

The Foreign Office News Department adopted an information and liaison role. The Crown Film Unit transferred to the Ministry in April 1940 and produced films publicising emergency campaigns and information on wartime events and measures. Records of the film units are in INF 5, INF 6 and INF 12.

Crown Film Unit and Army Kinematography Unit publicity films are held in the British Film Institute National Archive. Files of the Ministry of Information Publications Division are in INF 14. In addition FO 371 contains many examples of overseas propaganda, year by year.

In August 1941 the Political Warfare Executive was formed by an amalgamation of parts of the European sections of the BBC and of the Foreign Publicity Department of the Ministry of Information with Special Operations I, formerly the propaganda section of the Special Operations Executive (records in HS record series). A re-organisation took place in 1942, and a Directorate of Plans and Propaganda Campaigns was formed under a Planning and Policy Committee to plan, initiate and supervise political warfare and propaganda campaigns. This responsibility passed to the Ministry as countries were liberated and the Executive was finally wound up in 1946. Its records are in FO 898 , press summaries of foreign material are in FO 899 and directives are in FO 371.  There are further, supplementary, records in FO 954 (also known as the Eden Papers). You can download images of the Eden Papers from our website.

Minutes of the Inter-Allied Information Committee, 1940-1943, are in INF 1. Reports and discussion of its work and the possible creation of a United Nations Information Board are FO 371 (1943). FO 371 also contains interesting material, year by year, including the creation of a German-language newspaper for émigrés in 1941 (FO 371/26554).

6. Post 1945

At the end of the war the Ministry was wound up and its “engagements” transferred to the new Central Office of Information, which maintained the previous division between home and overseas publicity. Overseas publicity was concerned with cultural, educational and trade operations. The overseas divisions included exhibitions, films and television, overseas press services, radio and reference. Divisional reports are in INF 8; publicity material issued by the COI is in INF 2 and INF 13; files of the Crown Film Unit are in INF 5; some personal files are in INF 21; staff lists are in INF 22. See FO 953 for examples of Foreign Office publicity from 1947. The Control Commission for Germany played a role in education and propaganda: see FO 946, FO 1050 and FO 1056.

The Information Research Department was set up in 1946 under the Foreign Office to help counter Russian/Stalinist expansion, propaganda and infiltration, both in Britain and abroad, particularly amongst the western labour movement. Records of its work are in FO 1110 and reports are in FO 975.

Records of the Information Policy Department including Information and Propaganda policy concerning the USSR and its satellite states, covering the years 1947-1966, are in FO 953.

7. Empire and Commonwealth information and propaganda services, post-1945

CO 537, Colonial Office Confidential General and Confidential Original Correspondence contains much material relating to ‘Communist’ and Anti-Communist propaganda in the post-War period, partly on a country-by-country basis but there are also documents relating to overall policy issues. CO 1027 contains the registered files of the Colonial Office Information Department, 1952-1967.

Other series between them contain a lot of useful supplementary material relating to information and propaganda in the colonies and ex-colonies:

• CO 875 contains records of the Colonial Office Public Relations Department, later the Information Department, 1940-1952, relating to publicity and propaganda concerning the colonies
• Registered files of the Colonial Office: Intelligence and Security Departments, covering the years 1954-1965 are in CO 1035. These deal with matters relating to the security of British colonies and colonial intelligence matters
• CO 1035/117 Proposal to use Information Research Department (IRD) material to counter Communist propaganda in colonies, 1956
• There is further material on a country by country basis in the record series for individual countries.
• Records of the Commonwealth Relations Office and Commonwealth Office’s Information Policy Department 1957-1966 are in DO 191
• Registered files of the Commonwealth Relations Department, 1961-1966, are in DO 192
• Registered files of the Commonwealth Relations Office and Commonwealth Office: News Department,1960-1967, are in DO 194
• Records of the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices Information, News and Guidance Departments, 1967-1980, are in FCO 26

8. Further reading

Louise Atherton, ‘Never complain, never explain’: Records of the Foreign Office and State Paper Office 1500-c.1960, PRO Reader’s Guide No 7 (PRO Publications, 1994)

M Sanders and PM Taylor, British propaganda during the First World War (Macmillan,1982)

Balfour, Propaganda in war, 1939-1945 (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978) 

IRD, origins and establishment, Information Research Department 1946-1948, History notes No 9, Historians in Libraries and Records Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (August 1995)

WJ West, Truth betrayed: Radio politics between the wars (Duckworth, 1987)

Garth S Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda and persuasion (Sage Publications, fourth edition, 2006)

James Chapman, The British at war: Cinema, state and propaganda, 1939-45 (Cinema and society) (IB Taurus New Edition, 2003)

Susan L Carruthers, The media at war: Communication and conflict in the twentieth century (Palgrave Macmillan, 1999)

Andrew Defty, Britain, America and anti-Communist propaganda, 1945-1953: Propaganda 1945-1958 (Cass Series – Studies in Intelligence) (Routledge, first edition, 2004)

Philip M Taylor, British propaganda in the twentieth century: Selling democracy (Edinburgh University Press, 1999)

Philip M Taylor, Munitions of the mind: A history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present day (Manchester University Press, third edition, 2003)

2. What kind of documents am I likely to find?

You will find a variety of documents such as:

• private and official letters (mainly in-coming)
• reports and instructions
• treaty papers
• memoranda
• council minutes
• draft parliamentary bills

The early state papers are those of Henry VIII’s chief ministers (not necessarily secretaries of state), including Wolsey and Cromwell.

Later ministers tended to take papers into retirement (in which case they will not be held by The National Archives) or allowed them to stay on in public custody.

Watch our Spotlight On: State papers video for a brief introduction to State Papers.

3. Key records and where to search online

Many of the letters and papers of Henry VIII are filed in department code SP (State Paper Office). Use our catalogue to find out more about what each series contains:

• SP 1: Letters and Papers Henry VIII, 1509-1547, which are bound volumes of miscellaneous public and private letters
• SP 2: Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, Folios, 1516-1539, similar papers but in a larger format (and less well described)
• SP 3: Lisle papers, 1533-1540, the papers of Arthur Plantagenet, Lord Lisle, as deputy of Calais under Henry VIII
• SP 4: Signatures by Stamp, Henry VIII, 1545-1547, which are documents issued under the king’s stamped signature
• SP 5: Miscellanea relating to the Dissolution of the Monasteries and to the General Surveyors, Henry VIII, 1517-1560
• SP 6: Theological Tracts Henry VIII
• SP 7: Wriothesley papers, 1536-1540, mainly letters to Thomas Wriothesley when clerk of the signet and secretary to Cromwell

Search online versions of these records at:

• State Papers Online (institutional subscription required or free to view at The National Archives)
• British History Online £– includes free access to calendars of the letters and papers only; these calendars contain summaries of letters and papers organised chronologically; some items are virtually complete transcripts of the original documents, others are shorter

Note: British History Online does not provide the references to the original documents.

4. How to search for documents which are not online

Only a small proportion of state papers are viewable online.

To view the rest you will need to visit The National Archives at Kew, pay for research or visit one of the other institutions where state papers are held.  However, you may need to use online resources, like our catalogue, to help you select the right documents.

4.1 Published calendars

Consult the calendars of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII (also available online as described above) available in The National Archives at Kew. This 28 volume calendar summarises the text of original documents held at the following places:

• The National Archives
• The British Library
• private collections – most notably the Lansdowne, Harleian and Cottonian
• Hatfield House

The calendar provides references to the original documents. Those held at The National Archives have the code ‘RO’ shown in the left hand column of the calendar entry.

To find the modern reference for National Archives documents you will need to use printed keys which are available with the printed calendars in the reading rooms of The National Archives at Kew. Section 5 explains how to do this.

5. How to find document references from the calendars

5.1 Using the newer key – example taken from volume 1 of the Letters and Papers (1513)

1. From the calendar, note the entry number and the references on the left-hand side

2. If these include the letters ‘RO’, the document is held at The National Archives

3. Using the printed key, find the corresponding entry number and note The National Archives’ document reference shown against it

5.2 Using the older key – example taken from calendar entry for Letters and Papers, XI, 766

The older keys require a slightly different procedure

1. From the calendar, note the entry number

2. Find the key for volume XI and look for the appropriate entry number

3. Against the entry number will be a description of the type of document (e.g. SP Henry VIII 108, followed by the folio or page numbers)

4. To find the modern reference for ‘SP Henry VIII’, turn to the pasted in sheets at the front of the key

5. These show the first part of the prefix, e.g. SP 1. Putting the two together, the full reference of the document is SP 1/108, pp 178-181

Note: There are also separate sections in the calendars, equivalent to the Calendars of Patent Rolls for other reigns, relating to grants (these are usually indicated by a ‘g’ or grant in the index entries). The documents referred to in these sections are in:

• C 66 for enrolled grants (shown by the reference Pat. in the entry)
• C 82 for those denoted by the letters SB (signed bill) and PS (privy seal) in the entries

In both of these cases, look at the separate series lists available at The National Archives for the full document reference.

6. Other useful resources

• Palaeography tutorial
• Beginners’ Latin