History of the Second World War
The History of the Second World War is the official history of the British contribution to the Second World War and was published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO). The immense project was sub-divided into areas to ease publication, "United Kingdom Military Series", the "United Kingdom Civil Series" for the civilian war effort; the "Foreign Policy series", the "Intelligence series" and the "Medical series" are eponymous. Other volumes not under the aegis of the series but published by HMSO may be read as adjuncts, covering matters not considered in great detail or  at all, in one case, in the main series. Further volumes, published after the privatisation of HMSO or in the series about the Special Operations Executive, are also useful. The volumes were intended to be read individually, rather than in series, which led to some overlapping. In their introductions to their parts of the series, Sir Keith Hancock and Sir James Butler wrote that this was to obviate a need to read more volumes than those covering that part of the war effort. Hancock edited the Civil Series and Butler the Military Series. The first volume appeared in 1949 and  the last in 1993, with a revised edition of one volume appearing in 2004. An unorthodox decision was to cover the conflict from a theatre of operations point of view rather than by service, to acknowledge that military operations were intimately linked. The works published before 1970 lack references to unpublished sources until government archives were opened, to an extent, by the Public Records Act 1958 and the Public Records Act 1967. The works were published with only references to published sources because British constitutional conventions on the anonymity of government officials and ministers were followed, leading to a somewhat  detached narrative style in some cases. A "parallel series" of volumes for official use were printed, which referenced the unpublished sources in manuscript, in red ink. A few official copies "escaped" into public libraries and these additions can be seen. Other official departmental histories. A number of official histories were produced by government departments. The authors worked under the same conditions and had the same access to official files but their works did not appear in the History of the Second World War.