The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] Philip Kerr was prime minister Lloyd George’s private secretary during WW1, but not that Kerr was one of the Round Table’s leaders.) 2. The enormous British (mostly MI6) operation against the American isolationists in the early years of WW2 described by Thomas Mahl in his PhD and subsequent book, Desperate Deception (Virginia: Brassey’s, 1989) […]

Secret Justice: Public Interest Immunity Certificates (PIICs) and their use in the Asil Nadir trials

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013) FREE

[PDF file]: […] defence. It was only when Geoffrey Robertson QC, counsel for Paul Henderson, against the advice of counsel for the other two defendants, brought out Henderson’s links with MI6 that the judge ordered disclosure of documents relating to the security services, having earlier, after Alan Clark’s sensational evidence, allowed only disclosure of documents relating to […]

Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza by Peter Oborne

Lobster Issue 92 (2026) FREE

[PDF file]: […] led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’ and praises Corbyn having ‘been proven correct when the foreign policy establishment – the Foreign Office, the RUSI, Chatham House, MI6 etc – have led us to calamity in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere’.4 Oborne’s political trajectory is fascinating and one can only look forward hopefully to […]

A Hack’s Progress by Phillip Knightley

Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997) £££

[PDF file]: […] failed with hundreds of times the resources of SIS, a ‘man from the FO replied: Ah yes, but you have to take account of the fact that MI6 is the most professional and efficient intelligence in the world. This is not to criticise the Americans, of course, but . . .13 The third theme […]

Classified: Secrecy and the state in modern Britain by Christopher Moran

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013) FREE

[PDF file]: […] subsequent modifications. Before WW2, in practice the state was willing to clobber little people – e.g. the novelist Compton MacKenzie who revealed a handful of secrets about MI6 in a book in the 1930s – but unwilling to do anything when prime minister Lloyd George took van loads of official (and thus secret) papers […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013) FREE

[PDF file]: […] controversy in October1 9 showed Campbell among many New Labour pals. Those linked to bid backer Morgan Stanley included current Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, ex-head of MI6 John Scarlett and ex-Blair chief of staff Jonathan Powell. Portland figures in addition to Campbell and Allan were Powell’s brother Chris; Martin Sheehan, a Gordon Brown […]

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 […]

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 […]

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’ – […]

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’ – […]

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