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
[…] notes and bibliography. It is hardly revisionist, though in an academic environment they obviously would appear to be. By far the most interesting selection is Andrew Lownie’s ‘Tyler Kent: isolationist or spy?’. I do not agree with all of the conclusions but Lownie proves himself to be one of the best researchers around. Stephen Dorril
[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. […]
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
Nicky Hager Craig Potton Publishing Box 555, Nelson, New Zealand $25 (New Zealand) 1996 Sample chapters at http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/sp/ This was mentioned briefly in the Guardian some months ago. Hager has done a Duncan Campbell and stitched together, in incredible detail, New Zealand’s contribution to the NSA-run global network of communications interception. But his work goes … Read more
Tom Bower, Heinemann, London This is the biography of Dick White, the only man to have been head of both MI5 and MI6 (SIS) and it is a massive breach of the new Official Secrets Act. For Bower not only had access to White’s memoir of the period, with White to vouch for him, he … Read more
