The Blairs and their Court

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Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

Francis Beckett and David Hencke London: Aurum Press, 2004, £18.99, h/b   According to Beckett and Hencke, in the late 1980s Nigel Lawson could never understand why Tony Blair was a member of the Labour Party rather than of the Conservative Party. This question subsequently occurred to a growing number of Labour Party members and […]

I married a war criminal

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Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££

Cherie Blair: Speaking for Myself Cherie Blair London: Little, Brown, 2008, h/b, £18.99   The relentless harrying of Neil Kinnock by the Murdoch press at the time of the 1992 general election outraged Labour Party people, among them Cherie Blair. This was the general election when The Sun proudly boasted that it was its […]

Denis Healey

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Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003) £££

Edward Pearce London: Little, Brown, 2002, £25, h/b.   Compared to the present crop of media-trained, PR-conscious, line-following, careerist pigmies who comprise the current Labour Cabinet, Denis Healey looks like a giant from a golden age. Before his well known roles as Minister of Defence and Chancellor of the Exchequer (during the Tory-induced inflation […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££

[…] secondary bond market, for more than 40 per cent of global derivatives’ means that much of the chaos of the past year originated in London, while Gordon Brown and Ed Balls were in charge of the Treasury. Which makes Brown’s posturing as the man who will reform the financial world the more ridiculous. Credit […]

Recent JFK (and related) literature

Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996) £££

BROWN, Walt. Referenced Index Guide to the Warren Commission. Wilmington (Delaware): elmax, 1995. 303 pps. An essential work of navigation for anyone sailing the seas of the Report and the Hearings and Exhibits. Supplements rather than replaces the search facilities on the Warren Commission CD-ROMs. COLLOM, Mark, and SAMPLE, Glen. The Men on […]

The Making of New Labour’s European Policy

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Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3) £££

[…] as if Labour, and not Edward Heath (and OPEC) had caused the 1970s inflation. I suspect that by the late 1980s Labour’s leaders – Kinnock, John Smith, Brown – had accepted as fact that it was Labour policies which were responsible for the 1970s inflation. As for ‘New’ Labour’s European policies, in opposition between […]

Defector Politics: or, grooving with Mr G.

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

[…] its piece naming the Guardian’s Richard Gott as ‘the KGB’s British writer-in-residence’.(2) On 27 December the Guardian printed a photograph of Mr G being embraced by Ron Brown, the former MP for Leith, and Bill Michie MP. It was a busy day for Mr Michie, for he was also named in The Times in […]

More Book Reviews

Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994) £££

[…] interesting anecdotes in chapter 7 about Kaiser’s time in Britain as the number 2 at the US Embassy during the first Wilson government. There’s this on George Brown while Labour’s Foreign Secretary: ‘….he was also particularly friendly to America. Several times he went along with Washington’s proposals even though he didn’t fully agree with […]

The thirteenth pillar – the death of Di reconsidered

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££

[…] Paris on the weekend of the crash. At least one officer was detailed to shadow Diana and Dodi after their arrival from Sardinia (Stuart Qualtrough and David Brown, ‘The two vital questions…’ – The People 9 November, 1997. Another school of thought believes that Dodi was the intended target and Diana happened to be […]

Iraq

Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££

[…] magazine is now edited by John Lloyd, another one who has made the lucrative journey from left to right. See Lobster 47 p. 10. See also Colin Brown, ‘WMD expert reopens row about “sexed-up” dossier’, The Independent 16 February 2005. The text of the programme is at At the Davos meeting in January the […]

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