Truth in Public Life explores the difficulty in defining truth, its critical importance in civilised society and the challenges and threats to telling the truth in different public service settings. Three leading experts reflect on subjects related to truth in public life. Vernon White, in his essay 'Truth Pursued, or Being Pursued by Truth', shows that absolute truth exists and explains why and how it matters morally. In 'Truth Sustained', Stephen Lamport describes why truth is important to sustaining civilised society and argues that truth is central to other essential qualities, such as objectivity, honesty, openness, leadership, selflessness, integrity and accountability. In her essay 'Truth Told', Claire Foster-Gilbert explores the challenge of truth-telling for public servants: for politicians, who are routinely not believed; for civil servants, whose ministers may only want to hear those facts that support their policy ideas; for journalists, tempted to tell the story that is 'too good to check'; for judges, who may suffer from unconscious bias; for police officers, who must win the trust of the public by believing accusers, without jeopardising justice for the alleged perpetrators. This short book is a potent reminder of how important truth is, even as it is threatened afresh.

Good governance is one of the UK's fundamental values, and citizens are entitled to expect that public officials, both elected and non-elected, behave according to the highest standards of ethical behaviour. However, such lofty aspirations are not enough to root out corruption. If integrity in public life is to be maintained, the core principles behind it must be constantly sustained and strengthened. This new Haus Curiosities volume, published in collaboration with Westminster Abbey Institute, looks at the place and meaning of integrity in the individual public servant, in public service institutions, and in the wider public they purport to serve. It tries to answer the fundamental questions of what integrity means in public life, what lasting value it has, and why it has such a critical part to play in the constitution of Britain. The book also explores how people in public service institutions can cease to behave with humanity when those institutions deny the individual human spirit. On the other hand, the authors argue for the critical importance of institutions in upholding values when fallible humans forget them, as we have witnessed in the Civil Service's steadfast and stabilising response to the Brexit referendum and its uncertain aftermath. Integrity in Public Life provides a critique of and an essential guide to integrity, leaving the reader with some hope for its continued place in public life.

The Power of Whitehall provides rich and informative observations about the nature of the Civil Service, its values and effectiveness, what threatens it and how it should continue to adapt to a changing world. Journalist David Normington and historian Peter Hennessy address themes such as the importance of politicians trusting Civil Servants and the difficulties that arise when they don't; the role of Special Advisers and the extent to which they are a threat to the Minister-Civil Servant relationship; and of the effect of Select Committees and the media. Civil Servants are now exposed to the public in unprecedented ways, with both negative as well as positive consequences. What does it mean that the political neutrality of the Civil Service has been enshrined in law since 2010, approximately 150 years after it was first proposed by Northcott and Trevelyan? The Power of Whitehall is an accessible introduction to the life of the Civil Servant as well as the Civil Service itself.

Letters from Lockdown comprises 12 weekly letters written by the Director of Westminster Abbey Institute during the Coronavirus lockdown, and three accompanying essays that give the deeply personal perspectives of a politician, a civil servant and a police officer as the crisis unfolds. The letters are addressed to the public servants trying to carry the nation through the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic and were written to be a source of strength and support. As she wrote them, the author was unaware how events would unfold. Nevertheless, the 12-week period formed a narrative arc not unlike a classic 'hero's journey' and the letters show some similarities and differences between the classic plot and what the nation and its public servants had actually been through. The letters offer ways of strengthening public servants to make them ready, constant and enduring in their response to the needs of the nation. They speak of strengthening not just the soul of individual public servants but also of their institutions. The essays address not only the private and public struggles of public servants during the crisis but ask what, if anything, will change in our world as a result of the pandemic. They seek to equip public servants to respond to and shape emerging worlds and new needs.