Just Boris by Sonia Purnell

Lobster Issue 64 (Winter 2012)

[PDF file]: […] felt obliged to permanently distance himself from News International, Johnson very deliberately decided to publicly associate himself with Murdoch, dismissing the ‘Hacking scandal’ as ‘codswallop’ and a Labour stunt. He very publicly invited Murdoch to be his guest at the Olympics. Without much doubt his thinking is that Murdoch will ride out the ‘Hacking […]

Unredacted: Russia, Trump and the Fight for Democracy by Christopher Steele

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] Steele emphasises the Putin regime’s commitment to supporting authoritarianism and encouraging division throughout the West. As for his own political trajectory, he had supported Blair and New Labour, voting for them in 1997 and 2001, but was opposed to the Iraq War. Indeed, the invasion was one of the factors that pushed ‘me away […]

Apocryphilia

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015)

[PDF file]: […] million inhabitants of the UK – and its fiscal policy reflected this: inheriting a standard rate of income tax of 9 shillings in the pound (45%) from Labour in 1951, Butler immediately increased this to its highest ever peace time level of 9 shillings and 6 pence (47.5%) a year later, also allowing at […]

Governing from the Skies: a Global History of Aerial Bombardment by Thomas Hippler

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] (2015), has raised some interesting points. With apologies for putting O’Brien’s argument somewhat crudely, he argues that while Germany’s war in the East was certainly the more labour intensive, which accounts for the Wehrmacht’s huge death toll on that front, it was much more capital intensive in the West. The demands on Germany of […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] was talking to a City source yesterday (one who is strongly opposed to the investment bankers ‘soft coup’ of Westminster and Whitehall). He said that under New Labour, H.M. Treasury had been ‘utterly captured’ by the investment banking industry. He said it had happened through subscription to a ludicrously flawed ideology, the ‘revolving door’, […]

You get the report you pay for

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] model of long-term growth theory operating under the framework of neoclassical economics’. (p. 67) This is an economic formula which purports to show the relationship between capital, labour and technology in creating GDP growth. I am not an economist, so I cannot say to what degree this longstanding theory (dating from 1957) would uphold […]

Reporting on Hitler: Rothay Reynolds and the British Press in Nazi Germany by Will Wainewright

Lobster Issue 77 (Summer 2019)

[PDF file]: […] about his fellow correspondents in Berlin and the various proprietors they worked for. Certainly, Rothermere seems to have been the worst, although Clement Attlee did apparently describe Lord Beaverbrook as ‘the only evil man I ever met’. (p. 121) John Newsinger is working on a book on the Labour Party’s foreign, defence and colonial policies.

TO CATCH A SPY: How the Spycatcher Affair Brought MI5 in from the Cold by Tim Tate

Lobster Issue 89 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] on the Hollis matter in March 1981 was a lie. In those days lying to the Commons might have been a resigning issue. But since the leading Labour politicians of the time were afraid to go near any security issues, the Thatcher-Armstrong strategy wasn’t necessary. There is a wonderful German word, verschlimmbesserung, which means […]

The Plots Against the President, by Sally Denton

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] summation of the noninvestigation of Zangara’s intriguing background, and of the diverted rush to Zangara was originally tried for attempted murder and sentenced to 80 years hard labour. Soon after that, he was tried for murder, because one of the bystanders hit by his bullets – Chicago mayor Anton Cermak – died when his […]

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