A Brief History of Record Management at the National Archives

Abstract

This paper is a much abridged version of a section of the opening chapter of the official history of criminal justice between 1959 and 1997 which David Downes, Tim Newburn and Paul Rock were formally commissioned to write some six and a half years ago. Their work has been based on numerous archives, secondary sources and interviews, but the principal resource, and the principal archive, the repository of government records, the 'strong box of the Empire', is the National Archive at Kew, and the focus of this article is on record management there.