The Lockdown Files are a historian’s dream

For all that the Lockdown Files, as reported in the Telegraph, sometimes read like the screenplay of The Thick of It, they will be a wonderful resource for historians. Whatever one thinks of the morality of Isabel Oakeshott’s actions vis-à-vis Matt Hancock, we now have 2.3 million words of WhatsApp messages that offer a rare psychological profile of ministers acting with emergency powers in a swiftly unfolding global crisis.

Historians employ a number of different sources in their books, all of which have their internal strengths and weaknesses, but a download of text messages the length of the Bible sent by almost all the principal decision-makers during the worst peacetime national emergency in more than a century is on an entirely different scale from the ones that most historians are used to.

Every historical source must be judged through the prism of its author’s intention in writing it.