Northern (N): General (N). Visit by Permanent under Secretary at Foreign Office to Countries in Eastern Europe

A file of correspondence and reports concerning a tour of the Eastern bloc by Robert Allan, a British Conservative Party Member of Parliament who served as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The documents discuss the organisation of Allan's tour, during which he first visited Helsinki and Copenhagen before crossing the "Iron Curtain" and visiting Prague, Sofia, and Bucharest; and the view of the Foreign Office regarding the quality of intelligence Allan will be able to obtain in each country. The documents also cover the state of economic relations between Britain and Czechoslovakia; a note by the British legation in Sofia on Allan's visit to Bulgaria; and the internal political situation in each of the countries Allan will be visiting. Other documents include a series of reports presented to Allan before his tour, containing annual summaries of developments in each of Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Denmark, and Finland during 1958.