How MI6 and the CIA were involved in the death of Princess Diana Jon King and John Beveridge New York: SPI Books, 2002, £18.95 In the five years since the Paris car crash that killed Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed, and Henri Paul, interest in Diana herself may have waned, (1) but the circumstances surrounding her … Read more
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. […]
[…] According to David Leigh’s sources the MI5 officer Arthur Martin told friends before his tranfer to MI6 in November 1964, ‘I did hear that —— was a spy.’ An MI5 officer from K branch confirmed to Leigh that ‘We knew that —— was a CIA agent, or, if not an agent, at least very […]
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
[…] it ‘private and confidential’, as publicity could kill it.’ What this ‘action group’ did is unknown. (86) It has become quite widely accepted that Ellis was a spy for the Soviets. This story first took root in Chapman Pincher’s Their Trade is Treachery. Pincher added to it in a letter (6 May 1981) in […]
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
