[…] squeeze an early reply into his next column in the Guardian: ‘The professor’s caricature of this most principled, independent and forthright of journalists as just another suborned spy is ridiculous.’ Andrew’s attack on Ransome united two experts on Ransome’s days in Russia, who had previously been arguing about the meaning of Russian documents concerning […]
[…] the Phoney War remains a taboo subject in many respects – even at the level of popular fiction. Len Deighton made his name with the Harry Palmer spy thrillers, three of which, The Ipcress File (1962), Funeral in Berlin (1964) and Billion Dollar Brain (1965), were immediately filmed. The other book in the series, […]
[…] a number of long pieces about Wallace and Holroyd – and about Kincora – for the Catholic end of the Irish media. (See, for example, ‘Framed? The spy caught up in his own web of intrigue’, Sunday World, 31 May 1987, ‘Garda “Spy” Now A Hero’, Sunday World, May 3, 1987, and ‘The MI5 […]
[…] what was then called the ‘silicon chip’. And Alec Guinness kept the nation spellbound with the television version of John le Carré’s 1974 novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It depicted the tempting of senior UK espionage moguls with a one-off, spectacular solution to Secret Britain’s ills, a Soviet super-spy who would get us back […]
[…] anyone skulking in the undergrowth. The book ends on this unsatisfactory note. The Clough book, by contrast, is excellent. It provides a detailed demythologising of this particular spy case and relies on a review of all the literature in the case as well as primary research conducted by the author amongst recently released PRO […]
[…] Coleman the Pentagon has never forgiven President Truman for turning OSS into a supposedly civilian entity, and is well on the way to running the entire US spy apparat. I don’t really believe this strict military-civilian dichotomy. CIA has long been full of military spooks – General Charles P. Cabell and Admiral Stansfield Turner, […]
[…] spat over “turgid” writing’, The Times, 24 October 2008; Jack Lefley, ‘MOD censors its censor’s history for being boring’, The Evening Standard, 24 October 2008. Anon., ‘Former spy wins first round of “son of Spycatcher” book publication battle’, Solicitors’ Journal, 152 (29), 22 July 2008, p. 5; Anon., ‘Tribunal does not have exclusive jurisdiction’, […]
[…] of campaigns of official harassment; and a long piece by David Pegg which discusses a little known but very interesting book by Karl Marx, Herr Vogt: A Spy in the Workers’ Movement, which ought to raise an eyebrow or two out there on the British Left. Notes from the Borderland is £2.50 per issue […]
The origins of Civil Assistance? In the UK in 1974-75 a number of ‘private armies’ appeared, linked to retired senior military and intelligence figures. There were General Sir Walter Walker’s Civil Assistance, Colonel David Stirling’s GB75, and George Young’s Unison. (1) These groups formed in order to frustrate the impact of strike action in the … Read more
[…] July 1989 (syndicated column) Memo from Acting Assistant Commissioner, Office of Enforcement, to Commissioner of Customs, 30 October 1985. Mark Perry, The Secret Life of an American Spy’, Regardie’s, February 1989 Testimony of Ambassador Oakley, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and Committee on Judiciary, hearings, International Terrorism, Insurgency and Drug Trafficking, May 13-15 1985, […]
