The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

[…] not refer to her part in Smith’s conviction for espionage and asks: ‘How many Director-Generals of MI5 have been responsible for the conviction of a major Russian spy, who was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment at the Old Bailey?’ Smith thinks Rimington is embarrassed by her part in framing him. Something of the night…. […]

Crozier country: Free Agent: the unseen war 1941-1991

Lobster Issue 26 (1993)

Brian Crozier HarperCollins, London, 1993 This is a very interesting book which greatly adds to our knowledge of the clandestine shaping of British politics in the 1970s and 80s. It is also a book which, like Chapman Pincher’s Inside Story, will repay repeated re-reading. But amidst all the new material a surprising amount of these … Read more

Updating and Ongoing

Lobster Issue 26 (1993)

[…] campaign against Greece in the British serious papers in 1984/85. At the time the Greek government of Papandreou was trying to reduce the size of its domestic spy apparatus and that seemed the likely proximate cause. I think I was probably wrong about that. In his Eclipse (reviewed in this issue) Mark Perry reveals […]

My Granny Made Me an Anarchist: The Christie File: Part 1, 1946-64

Book cover
Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3)

Stuart Christie Christie Books, PO Box 35, Hastings East Sussex, TN 34 2UX pb, £34 from www.christiebooks.com   I really enjoyed this account of his childhood from Christie, Britain’s most famous anarchist and celebrated radical publisher. But I’m not sure how many other people would. I may have enjoyed it as much as I … Read more

Brian Crozier, the Pinay Circle and James Goldsmith

Lobster Issue 17 (1988)

[…] and Herman Zolling (London 1972) and an interesting article by Sarah Gainham in the Spectator 9 November 1962.   Robin Ramsay adds: Gainham is a writer of spy fiction. Her 1959 The Stone Roses (Sphere paperback, London 1971), a defector story set in Prague, carries the dedication ‘This story is for Friends in Prague’. […]

…MI5 goes on forever

Lobster Issue 26 (1993)

How perceptions have changed! In Leveller 51, March 1981, there was this snippet: ‘Why all the fuss about the Panorama programme on British Intelligence? Eventually there was just one cut — Gordon Winter, BOSS agent, former freelance journalist, in a pre-title sequence: “British intelligence has a saying that if there is a left-wing movement in […]

Elvis has left the building: Political Perspectives on the Fall of Polly Peck

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001)

The collapse of Polly Peck in 1990 remains perhaps the single greatest British corporate mystery of modern times.(1) How did a multi-billion pound international conglomerate, which had risen from East End obscurity to become the exemplar of eighties British Capitalism, collapse within a period of weeks? How did a favoured son of the London Stock … Read more

How many divisions does the Pope have?

Book cover
Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3)

[…] materialised. In 1942 Gehlen had been unable to predict the time and place of the Soviet counter-attack at Stalingrad.(5) In his new role running a major US-funded spy organisation, Gehl-en produced numerous reports claiming a Soviet invasion of the west was imminent, that the Soviets were building a fleet of flying wing jet fighters, […]

The Real Gemstone File

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001)

[…] mighty screed finally ends, Roberts takes us on an even stranger interlude: ‘EDITOR’S NOTE: This is all Joanie gave us on that date. However, we had a spy hiding behind a moosehead and he tells us that the psychiatrist came back into the room and Joanie handed him the notes quoted above and the […]

Tailpiece

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6)

Out there in the wonderful world of commercial science, the ability to do what mind control victims have been complaining of for nearly 20 years is coming into view. On 8 April CNN reported that a Sony scientist has a patent, first granted in 2000, on an ultrasound device which in the words of CNN’s … Read more

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