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Investigative journalist Ian Cobain argues a complex bureaucratic machine has grown up around the British state allowing governments to evade accountability and to bury secrets.

Cobain says the public has been left with a distorted picture of the workings of our state and of the nation’s culture and past. He looks at a number of significant events since the end of World War II including efforts to conceal the existence of Bletchley Park and GCHQ, unreported wars of the 1960s and 1970s, links with terrorist cells in Northern Ireland, workings of the criminal justice system, and peacetime surveillance techniques.

Cobain is an investigative reporter for the Guardian. He won the Martha Gellhorn Prize and the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism for his work on UK involvement in torture since 9/11.

Here he talks to BBC news and World Service broadcaster and journalist Rajan Datar.