Revealed: The day Britain's top civil servant rolled naked on the floor ranting about the end of the world



New job: Sir William Armstrong after he joined the Midland Bank in 1975



Britain's top civil servant ‘cracked up’ and lay on a floor at 10 Downing Street talking incoherently in the final days of Ted Heath’s Conservative Government.

According to a new book about No10, Sir William Armstrong, Heath’s Permanent Secretary of the Civil Service Department and his most senior mandarin, was taken to hospital after telling colleagues the world was coming to an end.

Last night, Whitehall insiders revealed Armstrong had, in fact, been naked while lying on the floor at No10, and that after hospital treatment he was sent by the then Lord Rothschild - a fellow senior civil servant - to recover at Lord Rothschild’s villa in Barbados for a month.

In Downing Street Diary Volume Two, Bernard Donoughue, a former senior policy adviser to Labour Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, reveals he was told about the bizarre incident by Heath’s Principal Private Secretary Robert Armstrong - no relation to Sir William - who later became Cabinet Secretary to Margaret Thatcher.

Donoughue writes: ‘Robert [also] told me the incredible story of William Armstrong’s crack-up during the last days of the Heath administration in 1974.

‘William Armstrong came through to No10 to see Robert, looking very distraught, and said they must talk somewhere “not bugged”.

‘Robert took him to the waiting room where WA [William Armstrong] lay on the floor, chain-smoking, and talking “very wildly” about the whole system collapsing and the world coming to an end.

‘In the middle of this, Gordon Richardson, Governor of the Bank [of England], walked in and “took it all calmly”.



'Robert then took William upstairs and tried to calm him down but he was still fairly mad.’

The book adds: ‘Next day WA summoned a special meeting of all the permanent secretaries and told them all to go home and prepare for Armageddon.

‘He was babbling incoherently. Douglas Allen [Treasury Permanent Secretary] led him away, phoned his wife and the hospital, and WA was taken off to hospital for treatment.

‘Robert phoned Heath, who was out of London, and told him that the head of the civil service had been locked up.

'Heath was not surprised, saying that he “thought William was acting oddly the last time I saw him”.’

Later, the top mandarin became a life peer as Baron Armstrong of Sanderstead and was chairman of the Midland Bank from 1975 until 1980, when he died.

Downing Street papers released three years ago revealed that Armstrong knew a secret that could have toppled Harold Wilson in 1970.

Lengthy files disclosed how the widow of Michael Halls, Wilson’s Principal Private Secretary at No10, battled for five years for compensation after her husband’s premature death from a heart attack.

Marjorie Halls claimed the stress of dealing with the problems arising from the personal lives of Wilson’s inner circle led to her husband’s death.

In a letter in 1972 to Sir William, Mrs Halls said her husband had enjoyed his job until 1968 when Wilson’s private secretary, Marcia Williams, became pregnant by her lover Walter Terry, a political journalist on the Tory-supporting Daily Express.

Mrs Halls, a senior civil servant in the Lord Chancellor’s Department, wrote: ‘The Prime Minister became so obsessed with the affairs of his personal political staff that it became increasingly difficult for Michael to get him to complete the essential work.’

She claimed the stress of dealing with the ‘bizarre atmosphere’ in Wilson’s ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ cost Mr Halls his life.

Long hours wore him out, he was unable to climb the stairs to the Prime Minister’s study and he died soon after in the spring of 1970.

Mrs Halls served a writ seeking £50,000 damages during the 1974 Election campaign.

But with Harold Wilson back in power for a second term, the case was never settled.