Hope & Despair: Lifting the lid on the murky world of Scottish politics by Neil Findlay and But What Can I Do?: Why politics has gone so wrong, and how you can help fix it by Alastair Campbell

Lobster Issue 86 (2023) FREE

[PDF file]: Hope & Despair: Lifting the lid on the murky world of Scottish politics Neil Findlay Edinburgh: Lulath Press, £14.99 But What Can I Do?: Why politics has gone so wrong, and how you can help fix it Alastair Campbell London: Hutchinson Heinemann, £22.00 John Booth Here we have two approaches to politics and public life […]

View from Lob 73

Lobster Issue

[…] listen to polls and focus groups for their professed views, I find myself unable to suppress the thought: I wonder what they are really thinking? Take Margaret Thatcher: what did she really think she was doing when she fronted the creation of the grossly unequal society we now have? Frank Field MP gave us […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014) FREE

[PDF file]: […] BBC TV veteran also followed him into membership of the British American Project (BAP), the informal network of aspiring Brits and Americans set up during the Reagan- Thatcher years to revive what the White House and No. 10 feared was a weakening ‘special relationship’ between the two countries. Paxman was recruited into the BAP […]

A Difference of Opinion: My Political Journey by Jim Sillars

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022) FREE

[PDF file]: A Difference of Opinion: My Political Journey Jim Sillars Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2021, £14.99 John Booth There aren’t many people still active in British politics who served in the Royal Navy when sailors were given 200 free cigarettes a month.1 But Jim Sillars is one of them and has lived to reflect thoughtfully on the 65 […]

Beyond Business by John Browne

Lobster Issue 62 (Winter 2011) FREE

[PDF file]: […] telling management exactly what it wanted to hear….McKinsey has, indeed, provided the cover an executive needed to carry out distasteful dismissals, restructurings, downsizings’.3 Most 2 Simon Jenkins, Thatcher & Sons, (London: Penguin, 2007), p. 277 3 James O’Shea and Charles Madigan, Dangerous Company, (London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 1999), pp. 256, 261-262 infamously, they advised […]

Colin Wallace and the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017) FREE

[PDF file]: Colin Wallace and the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry The Kincora cover-up continues Robin Ramsay Back story T his journal has been reporting on the Colin Wallace story since 1986.1 Among the many striking things Wallace has spoken and written about over the years was the situation in the Kincora boys’ home in Belfast in the […]

Hack Attack: How The Truth Caught Up With Rupert Murdoch by Nick Davies

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014) FREE

[PDF file]: […] had to do to get Murdoch to change sides. As Davies points out, since 1979, ‘no British government has been elected without the support of Rupert Murdoch…. Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown have consistently cleared their diaries and welcomed him to the inner sanctum of their governments (and then disclosed as little as possible […]

Friends of Israel Booth PDF

Lobster Issue

[…] friend of Israel currently portrayed by Aked. That doesn’t look likely in the present dilapidated state of British democracy. But I felt that about Britain when Margaret Thatcher continued to support apartheid South Africa in the face of growing world outrage. Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu is rapidly running out of international credit at the […]

The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation that Shocked the World by Ben Macintyre

Lobster Issue 90 (2025) FREE

[PDF file]: […] regiment at the time – four of whom were actually members of the ‘Pagoda’ assault team. Then there’s the versions by political and policing figures – Margaret Thatcher, Willie Whitelaw, Douglas Hurd and (Metropolitan Police Commissioner) Sir David McNee – who also were integral at some level. That’s another four. There is the autobiography […]

Accessibility Toolbar