The thirteenth pillar – the death of Di reconsidered

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££

[…] Public Prosecutor’s report into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Section D1023 – D4936 One of Al Fayed’s more unlikely supporters has been Charles Wardle, the Conservative MP for Bexhill and Battle. On 22 June 1999. He opened an adjournment debate on the accountability of the Metropolitan Police over the arrest of Al […]

The Northern Front

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

[…] July 2007, Charles Glass wrote in The Nation about what he knew well in those heady days during which he composed his diary: ‘Washington’s ideologically charged neo- conservative coterie possessed little or no understanding of the Middle East, allowing it to dismiss the easily predictable consequences of invading and occupying Iraq.’ A defensible charge, […]

The covert origins of the Biafran War

Lobster Issue 25 (1993) £££

[…] Harold Macmillan, it was not surprising that the Nigerian political leader of great personal integrity and honesty — Awolowo — who based his party machine on the Conservative Party and was a devout Christian and believer in British fair play would soon after Independence find himself not in the President’s or Prime Minister’s office […]

Cold War: Building for Nuclear Confrontation 1946-1989

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Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003) £££

Wayne Cocroft and Roger Thomas, edited by P.S.Barnwell English Heritage, 2003, h/b, £24.99   A very high-quality, well presented book that is considerably more appealing to look at than most of the unlovely structures which are illustrated between its large, hardback covers. It is partly because of the non-photogenic subject matter that the book is … Read more

More views from the bridge

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002) £££

Crime fighting? There must many candidates for the title ‘The most damaging thing I have read about this government’. My current candidate is a piece by Simon Jenkins, ‘A Keep Police off the Streets Strategy Unit’ (The Times 2 February 2002). After reminding the reader that in the UK the police are a local service, … Read more

Letter from America: CIA set for Pentagon buyout?

Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995) £££

[…] the possibility of a ‘third party’ in the US. The media’s chosen standard bearer last time was the extraterrestrial Texas magnate Ross Perot (the media, liberal and conservative, regularly ignore the sizeable Libertarian Party and the efforts of Jesse Jackson while fixating on weird eccentrics). This time as a ‘third party’ possibility both Perot […]

Britain’s Secret Propaganda War

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Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999) £££

[…] and 60s’, and Lashmar and Oliver’s chapter on IRD’s domestic operations takes that contention a good deal further forward. The authors tell us that in 1956 the Conservative MP Douglas Dodds-Parker, a former anti-communist ally of Labour Foreign Secretary Bevin, had been appointed to the Foreign Office as Under-Secretary – and apparently in formal […]

Hacks, pols and PR

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

[…] hard-working, middle-of-the-road. They were victims of the Political Class who had been left with no one to speak up for them, and nowhere to go. Neither the Conservative opposition, nor the New Labour government, is speaking for these people…….This estrangement between a tiny governing elite and mainstream British society is one of the overwhelming […]

The League of Empire Loyalists and the Defenders of the American Constitution

Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003) £££

[…] that the Chicago-based right-wing publisher Henry Regnery had agreed to issue. Regnery, however, backed out of the deal at the last minute. Chesterton next approached another American conservative publisher, Devin Adair, but it too rejected the book. (24) At Chesterton’s request, del Valle searched for yet another American publisher. Through Josephine Beaty, the DAC […]

Twilight in the desert: the coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy

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Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

Matthew R. Simmons London: Wiley, 2005, h/b   Ironic, perhaps, that I finished reviewing this book in Calgary, just south of the largest land-based oil project in the American hemisphere, the Athabasca shale tar sands oil recovery projects. Collectively these will realise investment between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the next ten years. Pipelines … Read more

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