The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] someone abolish proper nouns while I wasn’t watching? 35 reportedly at the centre of the piece. The story was a complete invention. In the great MI5 vs MI6 battle of the period, the Sunday Times, then edited by Andrew Neil, was on MI5’s side. The lobby In this column below I noted that there […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] at the time, it is even more important that the insistent objections of DIS analysts were circumvented through a deception apparently perpetrated on their own colleagues by MI6 and senior Cabinet Office intelligence officials. They claimed to have new intelligence that overcame our reservations, but were not prepared to disclose it to us. Almost […]

A key for a Clockwork Orange

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: […] our collection which support the claim that Burgess worked for MI5.’ Note that careful ‘not yet’. And note also the reference is only to MI5 and not MI6. But by the same token, there is absolutely nothing inherently improbable about a British novelist having a second job in intelligence: think of Graham Greene, Frederick […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] loss stories and Labour-is-useless pieces, every once in a while they carry something interesting. For example, on 23 November Glen Owen wrote ‘Covid inquiry evidence which criticised MI6 for denying Wuhan lab leak theory was censored by security officials’.1 Owen reported: Security officials censored a submission to the Covid Inquiry which highlighted the failure […]

Thatcher’s Secret War by Clive Bloom

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] Colin Wallace and Fred Holroyd are discussed. ‘Holroyd was apparently confined to a mental hospital after he made public the turf war that raged between MI5 and MI6 over who ran operations in Northern Ireland’. (p. 23) 2 ‘Apparently’? Fred was briefly sent to the Army mental hospital at Netley while he was still […]

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

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] me again’. (pp. 20, 22, 25). 1 At the time, he was thinking of a career in journalism, but instead, after Cambridge, he eventually ended up in MI6, as one does. He was sent to Russia in April 1990 and ended up head of the Russia Desk. How convincing is this self-portrayal? Obviously one […]

The Mossad Spy It’s not what you’ve done it’s who you are… the transgender spy

Lobster Issue

[…] met the second love of her live, Jim. The third section of this extraordinary tale begins in 1993 when she was recruited into an illegal joint MI5/ MI6 operation against Asil Nadir. A TurkishCypriot businessman, Nadir had built up a large business empire, Polly Peck International, in the UK before being charged with fraud. […]

Thatcher’s Secret War Subversion, Coercion, Secrecy and Government, 1974-90

Lobster Issue

[…] Wallace and Fred Holroyd are discussed. ‘Holroyd after he MI5 and Ireland’. was apparently confined to a mental hospital made public the turf war that raged between MI6 over who ran operations in Northern (p. 23) ‘Apparently’? Fred was briefly sent to the Army mental hospital at Netley while he was still serving and […]

The Defence of the Realm

Lobster Issue

[…] he was paranoid. Yes, Wilson attributed too much to MI5 when some of the briefings and smear stories were coming from other sources – for example former MI6 deputy chief G. K. Young (though from whom did Young get his information?). Some of those who came along a decade after Wilson had tried to […]

South of the border (occasional snippets from)

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] (‘an early career platform that connects students and graduates with the opportunities, advice and insights they need to kickstart their careers’) hinted at such, saying ‘MI5 and MI6 may be different organisations, but we share the same goal’. See or . 1 See or . 2 3 See or 4 1 death that resulted […]

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