Ronald Gray (1920-2008)

Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)

Ronald Gray, founder and owner of The Hammersmith Bookshop (1948-1963) and Hammersmith Books (1963-2000) died on 30 May at the age of 87. He was a most remarkable person, with a passionate interest in everything relating to politics and to recent history. He developed the vast stock of out-of-print books in Hammersmith Books to reflect … Read more

Wallace Clippings planted on Chapman Pincher

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

Just for the historical record, these rather faded cuttings from the Daily Express are just two of the stories that Wallace planted on Chapman Pincher while working in Information Policy. By Chapman Pincher the man who gives you tomorrow’s news -today THE SECURITY forces in Northern Ireland are facing a serious threat from American ex-Vietnam … Read more

Book reviews

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

[…] Pincher in Too Secret Too Long says’Fedora’ was ‘definitely not Viktor Lessiovsky, as has been claimed. The most likely candidate seems to be Vladimir Chuchuken, a KGB agent at the UN in New York from 1962 to 1977’ (p609). Chuchukin is named as a KGB disinformation officer in Barron’s previous book The KGB (1974) […]

Web update

Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3)

[…] upon any sensitive operational techniques of the security and intelligence services, and in particular upon their sources of information, including the identity of any officer, contact or agent.’ After the House of Lords ruling (see below), Liberty is taking the issue of whether the Official Secrets Act 1989 is compatible with the ECHR to […]

The once and future king?

Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)

[…] to the GLC in Croydon North East in March 1980. He was later a Labour councillor in Islington in 1982-1986 and thereafter for many years an election agent and researcher for Jeremy Corbyn MP. An accurate monograph of his political activity and connections would make interesting reading. He has a particular interest in Kurdish […]

George Orwell and the IRD

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

In their recent history of the Information Research Department (IRD), Paul Lashmar and James Oliver discuss George Orwell’s decision to collaborate with that organisation’s anti-Communist propaganda operations. They write that ‘George Orwell’s reputation as a left-wing icon took a body blow from which it may never recover when it was revealed in 1996 that he … Read more

Western Goals (UK)

Lobster Issue 21 (1991)

[…] Post. Expelled from his local Conservative Association after distributing racist leaflets in Bradford, but readmitted, apparently in 1991: in April 1991 he was acting as an election agent for the Conservative Party in Bradford. Member of Western Goals (UK) and their main contact in Yorkshire. Enjoyed close links with the BNP until they were […]

Mark Felt, Jason Blair and ‘Misty Beethoven’

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6)

Mark Felt is ‘Deep Throat’. Bob Woodward says so, and his word is law in this particular arena. No matter that Woodward had a dozen sources, some of whom may have been more important than Throat himself. The point is that ‘Throat’ is anyone Woodward says he is, and he says he is Felt. In … Read more

The Men with the Guns

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

[…] A third version appeared in 1980, entitled Beyond The Gemstone Files. It claimed to have being ‘written’ by one Peter Renzo, who claimed to be an ex-CIA agent. (A story and excerpts from this appeared in the Boston Globe April 19 1980). Renzo was, of course, a bullshitter, and, as the excerpts show, all […]

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