Michael Smith Gollancz, London,1996, £20 This is a curious and rather pointless book. In short chapters Smith attempts potted histories of MI5, SIS, signals and military intelligence. These are quite well done, but covering half a century in 20 pages, say, the chapters are barely more than sketches. (The Information Research Department gets a page!) … Read more
[PDF file]: The Shadow Man: At the Heart of the Cambridge Spy Circle Geoff Andrews London: I B Tauris, 2016, £20, h/b This is a revelatory book that, in its own quiet, understated way, is likely to send shock waves through the historiography of British Communism. Geoff Andrews is the author of the disappointing last volume […]
[PDF file]: A Spy Alone Charles Beaumont London: Canelo, 2023, £9.99 (p/b) Robin Ramsay This is only the second novel I have reviewed in Lobster.1 The cover and the author blurb tells us that author Beaumont is a ‘former MI6 operative’. ‘Operative’? Why not ‘officer’? The author tells me the word was chosen by the publisher. […]
[…] opening of the KGB archives and the testimony of Oleg Gordievsky, you might be forgiven for thinking that the question, Was MI5 Director-General Roger Hollis a Soviet spy? had been answered conclusively and resoundingly ‘No’. You would be wrong – or so says the doyen of British espionage writers, Chapman Pincher. In a piece […]
[…] may breach European privacy legislation and the European Commission is investigating four possible breaches of European law (Europe to Investigate Legality of RIP, 27/10/00, www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/14288.html and Net Spy Act may be Illegal, Independent 5/11/00, www.independent.co.uk/news/Digital/Update/ 2000-11/spy051100.shtml) A public consultation on the draft Codes of Practice (on Interception of Communications, Covert Surveillance and the use […]
Paul Todd, Jonathan Bloch, and Patrick Fitzgerald London: Zedbooks, 2009, £14.99, p/b, £39.95 h/b This book is published as the debate rages in America about whether or not the activities of the Bush regime, specifically the torture of various combat detainees and suspects rendered from various parts of the world, should be subject to … Read more
Annie Machon Lewes (East Sussex): Book Guild, 2005, h/b, £17.95 It is hard to ‘see’ this book because a lot of the material, especially in the first half, is familiar, half-remembered from the press reporting of the Shayler-Machon drama and the book Defending the Realm by Nick Fielding and Mark Hollingsworth. Nonetheless, familiar or … Read more
Anthony Glees and Philip H. J. Davies London: The Social Affairs Unit, 2004, £30, h/b This is a curious little book (112 pp.) in which two conservative intelligence academics wrestle with the realities of the events leading up to the attack on Iraq. But what manner of beast is a conservative intelligence academic? The … Read more
