Thatcher’s Secret War Subversion, Coercion, Secrecy and Government, 1974-90

Lobster Issue

[…] account of the 1974-79 period, perhaps because the material is less complex. When he strays off familiar territory it goes wrong. He has a short chapter on mind control, for example, which in ten pages, citing only three books, one newspaper article and five websites (none of them serious sites on mind control issues), […]

The Mandelson legacy

Lobster Issue 91 (2025) FREE

[PDF file]: […] Here, for example, is his memo to general secretary Larry Whitty dated 19 September 1986: ‘If you are able to see John Booth today please bear in mind the following: 1) NUJ Chapel is meeting this morning and we need to see the outcome of that meeting first; 2) John has briefed a reporter […]

Olivia Jayne Frank, 1956-2023

Lobster Issue 88 (2024) FREE

[PDF file]: […] of ritualistic obligation had robbed them of compassion. I was shocked to see that this important officer of the state of Israel did not dare speak his mind on the street. As he paced the floor, he told me that politics and ritual had crossed swords in the Holy Land for so long that […]

Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq by John W. Dower

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011) FREE

[PDF file]: […] of war), the length and verbosity of the various US enquiries set up to determine culpability for being ‘unprepared’ at Pearl Harbour, suggest a widespread frame of mind that takes as its starting point that America is entitled to regard itself as invulnerable. 1 Could a ‘demonstration’ of the bomb have been laid on? […]

Kelly Bond 007 essay

Lobster Issue

[…] began writing the 007 books, the official story is that Fleming began to write ‘the spy story to end all spy stories’ in order to ‘take his mind off an impending marriage’. While marriage for the long time bachelor was certainly in the works, other more important things were on his mind. Noel Coward, […]

Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour’s Lost England by Sebastian Payne

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] the Labour Party and working-class voters is broken, it takes something new to win them back. The party has yet to find an answer for Scotland, never mind in England.’ So how is Starmer to do that given the structural, economic and societal changes that Payne says ‘have made these parts of England more […]

Olivia Jayne Frank, 1956-2023

Lobster Issue free article

[PDF file]: […] of ritualistic obligation had robbed them of compassion. I was shocked to see that this important officer of the state of Israel did not dare speak his mind on the street. As he paced the floor, he told me that politics and ritual had crossed swords in the Holy Land for so long that […]

More on Hess

Lobster Issue 86 (2023) FREE

[PDF file]: […] reliably turning up at remote scenes of crime with a pair of open minds, gathering evidence of conspiracies which may well prove too sketchy for the procedural mind of a civil service solicitor at the Crown Prosecution Service. Richard J. Evans has himself explained the problem. Historians bring a whole variety of ideas, theories, […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 78 (Winter 2019) FREE

[PDF file]: […] the February 2000 press release, mentioned above. The old mantra, ‘If you stick to the truth you won’t have to remember whatever lie you’ve told’ comes to mind. 9 have not done. My disagreement with him is that I don’t believe he could possibly now remember an unredacted name on an MI6 intelligence document […]

In the Thick of It: The private diaries of a minister Alan Duncan

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] . 10 8 chaired the Jewish Leadership Council, a key body in promoting the ‘Labour anti-semitism’ scare?11 This is just one of many questions that come to mind reading this tour d’horizon of the much-travelled diarist. But first he must be thanked for telling us so much about the workings of UK government and […]

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