Lobster Issue 4 (1984) £££
[…] as being a ‘link with the foreign office’, he was trusted by the Foreign Office mandarins even more than security overlord Sir Maurice Oldfield, appointed by Mrs Thatcher in 1979. The appointment in 1980 of Sir Brooks Richard, an ex-diplomat, as Security Co-ordinator in Northern Ireland, was seen as giving the Foreign Office ‘game […]
Lobster Issue 19 (1990) £££
[…] ten pages of it; and he later confirmed, to the Times Diary, that he had got the idea from MI5. Presumably it is this section that Mrs Thatcher finds so interesting. During the House of Commons debate on the Official Secrets Bill on 15 February 1989, Norman Buchan MP mocked the Prime Minister for […]
Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££
[…] an endorsement better than that, thanks very much. And if ‘the Establishment’ was cross with ‘West’ it didn’t stop him becoming a Conservative MP; and under Margaret Thatcher, who hated dishers of dirt and secrets. So, for me, ‘West’ has always been a puzzle: a conservative (and Conservative) historian of spookery with ambiguous relations […]
Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££
[…] too convincing. The problem is he doesn’t give precise dates for this supposed event. One is left to suppose that it all revolves around the ‘rise of Thatcher’ – a formula he rightly refuses. The historical perspective he brings to bear down-plays the decisive significance of the 1980s. It all looks, in retrospect, as […]
Lobster Issue 3 (1984) £££
[…] beyond normal 30 yrs. Remarks by Lord Donaldson, Ch’mn Advisory Council on Public Records in 24 th Annual Report of Public Records Office. (Guardian 1 July 1983.) Thatcher personally stops publication of two books: official histories of war-time MI5 and war-time counter intelligence operations. (Guardian 25 November and 8 December 1983) Anthony Lester QC […]
Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003) £££
[…] was a sign that Atlanticism in the UK was now bipartisan. After 1979 the two major political parties had gone separate ways on the special relationship: under Thatcher the Tories had drawn closer to the USA than they had been under Heath; while Labour under Foot and Kinnock had adopted a stance critical of […]
Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££
W. D. Rubinstein (Second edition, revised and updated) London: Social Affairs Unit, 2006, pp., £20 Did you know that, on his death in 2001, former Beatle, George Harrison, left the second largest fortune in the UK (£98,916,000)? If you like facts like this, you will enjoy this book, and you will be in good … Read more
Lobster Issue 3 (1984) £££
[…] in Northern Ireland, what amounts to a revisionist history in miniature of WW2 intelligence operations on the British side, and a sardonic post-script on the Falklands: “Mrs Thatcher postured absurdly in the immediate aftermath …an illusion about an independent almost an imperial role comparable to that which regards nuclear weapons as deterrents to every […]