On getting it wrong and getting it right: Ronald Stark, LSD and the CIA

Lobster Issue 78 (Winter 2019)

[PDF file]: […] Drugs and Rock ’n’ Roll’ served as a distraction from political struggle and party discipline. To flesh out the theory, extra villains have been thrown in: Satanists, MI6, shrinks of the Tavistock Institute, the Grateful Dead, and the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (whose Marxist musicologist, Theodor Adorno, is said to have secretly tutored […]

Beaumont novel copy

Lobster Issue

[…] Robin Ramsay This is only the second novel I have reviewed in Lobster.1 The cover and the author blurb tells us that author Beaumont is a ‘former MI6 operative’. ‘Operative’? Why not ‘officer’? The author tells me the word was chosen by the publisher. It is set in post–2020 UK, with a recognizable Boris […]

ViewfromtheBridge

Lobster Issue

[…] children wept bitter tears on camera and no-one mentioned UK military aid to radical Islamists fighting Gaddafi. There are no references in the official report to SIS, MI6 or the Secret Intelligence Service.102 On the other hand, Nick Must noted that the report contains 76 references to ‘MI5’ and 213 to ‘Security Service’ – […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010)

[PDF file]: […] week-long sequence of events starting in late October. One, British Airways chairman Martin Broughton complains about the UK ‘kowtowing’ to the United States on airport security.1 Two, MI6 chief Sir John Sawers gives a lecture saying why his service should be excluded from general government cuts.2 Three, we have an international terror scare, with […]

Lob86 View from Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] children wept bitter tears on camera and no-one mentioned UK military aid to radical Islamists fighting Gaddafi. There are no references in the official report to SIS, MI6 or the Secret Intelligence Service.102 On the other hand, Nick Must noted that the report contains 76 references to ‘MI5’ and 213 to ‘Security Service’ – […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] He had regarded it all as “an enjoyable joke”, in cloak-and-dagger fashion. Gott denied receiving direct payments or naming fellow journalists: he had been called in by MI6 almost a decade before and they had accepted his explanation.9 (Emphasis added.) *new* The unsayable The New Statesman carries a decent critique by Neal Lawson of […]

Lob86ViewfromBridgepdf

Lobster Issue

[…] children wept bitter tears on camera and no-one mentioned UK military aid to radical Islamists fighting Gaddafi. There are no references in the official report to SIS, MI6 or the Secret Intelligence Service.89 On the other hand, Nick Must noted that the report contains 76 references to ‘MI5’ and 213 to ‘Security Service’ – […]

lob86View from Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] children wept bitter tears on camera and no-one mentioned UK military aid to radical Islamists fighting Gaddafi. There are no references in the official report to SIS, MI6 or the Secret Intelligence Service.73 70 or 71 I wrote about this in Lobster 74 at under subhead Manchester. 72 28 73 On the other hand, […]

Beaumont novel copy

Lobster Issue

[…] Robin Ramsay This is only the second novel I have reviewed in Lobster.1 The cover and the author blurb tells us that author Beaumont is a ‘former MI6 operative’. ‘Operative’? Why not ‘officer’? The author tells me the word was chosen by the publisher. It is set in post–2020 UK, with a recognizable Boris […]

Kincora: Britain’s shame by Chris Moore

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] The McGrath story involves much detail about the murky politics and paramilitary activity of Protestant fringe groups during the conflict with the IRA. Having had contact with MI6 in the sixties, McGrath was recruited by MI5 – precisely when, or for what, is unclear – providing him with cover for his sexual activities. 1 […]

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