Before the comprehensive gutting and refurbishment of the 1950s building in Whitehall in the early noughties, the Ministry of Defence was a hive of cell-like offices and immensely long corridors – I had been there several times when arranging the loan of paintings from the Imperial War Museum to the offices of various ministers. When David and I were shown around in 2004, the corridors and cells had been swept away and all was now open plan; even ministerial offices had a degree of transparency. However, we were not there to admire the new coffee shop culture in the re-opened Great Hall, but to negotiate access to `a secure crisis management environment’ whose name is in the public domain but to which we may not refer. This facility lies below ground to a depth of five floors, somewhere in central London. It is one of the centres where UK defence and counter-terrorism is managed and controlled, and it is also where members of the Government, civil service and the military meet at times of crisis, for example the start of the Iraq War and the 7 July bombings. Its actual existence is not a secret but for obvious reasons it keeps a very low profile.

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