Operation Musketeer

Heath was talking to Freddie Bishop, the prime minister's principal private secretary: "We paused, as Brook said, 'He's told me to destroy all the relevant documents. I must go and get it done.'

"With that Sir Norman, loyal as always to his prime minister, went off to destroy the Sevres Protocol and other documents which confirmed the collusion between Britain, France and Israel over Suez."

These pledged British support for a joint attack on Egypt after Nasser had nationalised the Anglo-French Suez Canal Company. The invasion ended in fiasco after a few weeks in the face of American opposition and a run on the pound.

In his book, The Course of My Life, Heath traces the swing in Tory support over the Anglo-American alliance in the Suez drama. He was government chief whip during the crisis and doubted Eden's policy from the start.

Telling Heath of the deal at Sevres, near Paris, to attack Egypt, Eden said the Americans were not to be told. Heath says that he added "somewhat unnervingly, that this is the highest form of statesmanship".

Eden resigned after the Suez debacle and Harold Macmillan became prime minister.

Lord Armstrong, Margaret Thatcher's cabinet secretary, said last week that Eden was furious when he was told that the secret pact had been formally recorded by the diplomats who met at Sevres. He ordered Sir Donald Logan, a senior diplomat, to demand that all three copies be destroyed - but the French and Israelis refused.

"The British copy was given to the prime minister and that was the last anyone saw of it," said Armstrong.

The Israeli copy came to light two years ago, proving that Eden had lied to parliament. It was found in an archive in the Negev desert by a BBC team making a documentary about the Suez invasion.

Logan said last night that he did not know the details of how the Sevres documents came to be destroyed, although it was assumed that this had been on Eden's orders. He made good the loss to the Public Records Office by presenting it with a copy of the rediscovered Israeli document.

Typewritten on three pages, it consists of seven paragraphs in French, one of which says the contents should remain "rigoureusement secretes".

Did Brook betray the civil service code by destroying historic papers that the nation had a right to see? Armstrong thinks he had no choice and would have done the same himself, if ordered to do so, while making sure he recorded his action for his successors.

This, he says, is what Brook did. He recorded his destruction of a secret state paper in a personal file, which Armstrong found. Brook had acted out of loyalty to Eden: "He was not a destroyer of paper."

Brook served as Macmillan's cabinet secretary for six years, becoming Lord Normanbrook. He died in 1967, aged 65. Eden died in 1977, aged 79.

Eden, a Eurosceptic, concluded in one of his last memos as prime minister that the Suez fiasco, which ended in Britain's surrendering to American pressure, might mean that Britain would have to "work more closely with Europe".

Heath says he read those words "with delight, mixed with sadness at all it had taken to bring about Anthony's change of heart". Consulted by the Queen's private secretary, he recommended Macmillan as Eden's successor and the way to Britain joining the European Community was opened. ...unquote "

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