If I wanted to start investigating encrypted databases and built-in support
for encrypted content in databases, where might I go? I'd prefer to begin
with something reasonably colloquial that just surveys the issues and the
possible approaches and architectures, without getting into the actual
business of encryption.

This is topical in the UK this week, but that's not the reason I'm asking.
(Some minor government robot in the Revenue not only sent the confidential
bank details of most of the country to someone who didn't ask for them and
didn't want them, he put the unencrypted CD in the post and it disappeared.)

Roy