Romeo Spy by John Alexander Symonds

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012) FREE

[PDF file]: […] of inaccurate tales of espionage.’ (p. 314) Symonds’ account ends with this devastating final paragraph. ‘In retrospect, nobody emerges from the Mitrokhin affair with much credit. The BBC and The Times competed against each other to see who could renege on their agreements first; MI5 tried every slippery trick to conceal Dame Stella’s stunning […]

Holding Pattern

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015) FREE

[PDF file]: […] information you want from just about anyone, so long as it has an environmental connection. Not even the spooks are exempt from EIR and the dear old BBC, whose investigative journalism knows no depths, recently used the regulations to gain information about the energy efficiency of the headquarters of MI5 and MI6, vital information […]

Newton on Keynes

Lobster Issue

[…] wrote in 1926) that ‘many big undertakings’ (notably public utilities) ‘need to be semisocialised’,4 in the form of semi-autonomous public corporations. But in organizations such as the BBC, the Bank of England, the Port of London Authority, ‘the big utility enterprise’ and ‘big insurance’ firms, and even the railway companies, Keynes identified a tendency […]

The Gloucester Horror

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015) FREE

[PDF file]: […] consistency but the emerging motive is transparent. In a typed and lengthy letter dated 3 January 1973, Mr Westlake wrote concerning Mr Sargeant’s analysis of the above-mentioned BBC film of the crash: ‘George Carley and I have now had time to digest your analysis and as your draft now stands there is liable to […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011) FREE

[PDF file]: […] to speak to negotiators.’ (p. 164) ‘Even during the election, Clegg had been moving on the issue – but without telling the electorate. He later told the BBC that he had changed his view during the general election: “Remember between March and the actual general election, a financial earthquake occurred on our European doorstep.” […]

South of the Border (updated 4 Aug 2022)

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022) FREE

[PDF file]: […] Also arrested, according to bulletins – both western and middle-eastern – was ‘the husband of Austria’s cultural attaché in Iran’ and a Polish scientist, Maciej Walczak. Whilst BBC news stated that ‘Poland confirms scientist being detained in Iran’21 there was what seemed to be a blanket denial from elsewhere, because ‘The UK and Austria […]

Her Majesty’s secret servants

Lobster Issue 62 (Winter 2011) FREE

[PDF file]: […] fine imposed and the expenses incurred by the Telegraph dealing with the court case. Harebrained? ‘Page 8’ was a film written and directed by David Hare on BBC 2 on 28 August 2011, in which Bill Nighy played a suave, sophisticated senior MI5 officer who saves the Service from being being destroyed in a […]

Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad by Michela Wrong

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022) FREE

[PDF file]: […] out: ‘Whatever these Western government ministers might say publicly, they could not claim to be unaware of Kagame’s tactics’. Where they were unsuccessful was in getting the BBC, CNN or Al Jazeera to give the tape recordings an airing. (pp. 77-78) Why then was the Rwandan regime so liked in the West? Tony Blair […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: South of the border (occasional snippets from) Nick Must Spook joke department ‘UK spies will need artificial intelligence’ reads the headline to a Gordon Corera piece on BBC news online.1 Yes, the gags are pretty much writing themselves now. Deferred prosecution agreements – buying your way out of trouble ‘A deferred prosecution agreement, or […]

The economic crisis continues

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011) FREE

[PDF file]: […] then about government borrowing;1 3 the trade deficit,1 4 and 10 Lewis was the author of the classic account of 1980s Wall St. rackets, Liar’s Poker. 11 BBC News on-line, 19 December, 2003, ‘IMF gives Brown borrowing warning’ 12 13 ‘Brown besieged over growth and borrowing plans’, The Times, 22 September 2005 14 20 […]

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