In February this year, unnoticed by the press, a funeral took place in a quiet Sussex village. In attendance were some famous names from London society of the fifties and sixties, and two men in regulation dark suits from an undisclosed department of the Security Services. They had been contacts for the deceased, Maria Novotny, […]
David Stirling: the authorised biography of the creator of the SAS Alan Hoe Little, Brown and Co, London 1992, £17.50 As the subtitle suggests, most of this book is taken up with the story of the foundation of the SAS. I didn’t read that section. I read the last third which contains lengthy accounts […]
[…] deep into the heart of the Blair project and into the history of its precursors. Follow Draper, the Labour student initially offered work by Agriculture Minister Nick Brown and then taken up by Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Mandelson, and we get a few insights into New Labour of the ‘stuffing my bank account […]
[…] it worked, another source did: Filin and Likhvintsev do business with foreign private military companies (PMCs): – «Meteoric Tactical Solutions» (South Africa) – in Angola; – «Kellogg, Brown &Root» (KBR Halliburton) – in Colombia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Georgia, and Iraq. – «Diligence Iraq LLC» (controlled by the Kuwaiti Mohammed as-Sagar) – in Iraq.” Their cooperation […]
Ben Pimlott Harper Collins, London 1992, £20 At one level, this deserves the plaudits it has received. It is a belting good read, such a good read, in fact, that I had got as far as 1967 before I realized that there was no mention of Lord Cromer, the Governor of the Bank of England […]
[…] the two men became friends. (4) A month later the leader of the Labour Party, John Smith, died, and Blair won the leadership election contest with Gordon Brown – in some accounts with financial assistance from Levy. (5) All accounts are agreed that Michael Levy then set about raising money – the figure of […]
[…] public transport as an organised, planned and publicly owned endeavour. And the man himself? Agreeing (in a restaurant in Islington in 1994) that another person – Gordon Brown – would effectively be the real prime minister wielding huge power over all government policy and strategy whilst Blair concentrated on a presentational, presidential role. Scott […]
[…] letter to the Bank of England in May 1997, ‘The new monetary policy framework’, announcing the formation of the MPC and setting out its terms of reference, Brown referred to Labour’s manifesto commitment that they would ‘ensure that decision-making on monetary policy is more effective, open, accountable and free from short-term political manipulation‘. (emphasis […]
[…] doesn’t mention Loy Factor around whom the book is built. On p.812 Armstrong tells us: ‘Some researchers speculate that the man wearing the horn-rimmed glasses and the brown coat may have been Lyndon Johnson’s associate Mac Wallace whose fingerprint may have been found on one of the boxes near the window…’ . On p.375 […]
[…] or was about to become Chair of the Labour Friends of Israel were simply untrue. I have never sought or wanted such a position.’ Gordon Brown also apparently has the interests of Israel close to his heart. A report in the Jewish Telegraph 27 June 2003 described Gordon Brown addressing the annual […]
