I pictured the Green Book (which Rishi Sunak has been urged to tear up) as a matt card-bound thing like an exercise book at school (in which the staples might be rusty from storage). The thing now has a virtual existence. Engagingly subtitled ‘Appraisal and evaluation in central government’, it had been a real paperback book in its 2003 edition, with a picture of a lamppost and the London Eye on the cover.
It’s funny how colour names stick. The standard designation for official publications was Blue Book, a term in use before the English Civil War. The name was applied ad hoc to things like the three Blue Books issued between 1780 and 1792 by the self-appointed Catholic Committee of laymen seeking emancipation.
There is still today an official blue book, UK National Accounts: The Blue Book, published by the Office for National Statistics.
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