Revealed: Guilty Secrets of the End of British Empire

The British Empire once stretched around the world, and in the far-flung outposts of Britannia there were many diplomatic files of a sensitive nature.

When the British Empire receded, thousands of secret files returned to British shores — they contained the material that would have been embarrassing to Britain if it were left behind.

A collection of these files — dating from the 1930s to the 1970s — was kept secret for decades. It contained documents from the former British territories of Anguilla, Bahamas, Basutoland (Lesotho), British Indian Ocean Territories and many other locations.

Now the files are being made public, and the first batch of them has been released. The BBC’s Sanchia Berg has been looking at them, and she tells Lisa Mullins that they reveal “the guilty secrets of the end of the British empire”.