Dr. Anthony Glees, who wrote an interesting study of German Exile Politics in WW2 (Clarendon Press 1982) is shortly bringing out a book on Communist Subversion and British counter-intelligence 1939-45 (Jonathan Cape). Our view of that might be influenced by the fact that he has written for the new Encounter magazine.
Michael Scammel, who has just published a massive biography of Solzhenitsyn, is turning to a study of the CIA-funded anti-communist propaganda operations of the 1950s. No doubt this will include Encounter …..
September should see the publication of Henry Hurt’s Reasonable Doubt: the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Originally commissioned by Reader’s Digest, it was cancelled when new editorial staff took over. Don’t be put off by the Readers’ Digest tag. It should be a major work, extremely well-researched (see his previous work on Shadrin) with many new interviews and material.
Due soon from Carter’s Director of the CIA, Admiral Stansfield Turner (Rhodes Scholar 1947), is Security and Democracy: the CIA in transition.
And a new blockbuster is on the way from Anthony Summers, he of File on the Czar and Conspiracy fame.
Friends in High Places: the Bechtel Story by McCartney. (See Mother Jones, June 1984) for Bechtel’s relevance to the Reagan regime, and earlier periods in the Middle East … and Citizen Hughes: how Howard Hughes tried to buy America – by Drosnin, already partly serialised in Playboy (Sept/Oct 1984) and recently in the Sunday Times colour supplement. It seems that Hughes’ power extends beyond the grave in as much as Hughes so completely bankrolled Reagan’s key adviser Senator Paul Laxalt it is possible to see Reagan as Hughes’ dream come true: his own man in the White House.
It may be interesting to read C. M. Woodhouse’s The Rise and Fall of the Greek Colonels (Granada). Woodhouse worked for MI6 after the war in Greece and Iran, then became a Tory MP.
William Keegan’s column in the Observer is the most informative economic view of Britain so his Britain Without Oil (Penguin) should be worth a look, as will The Price of truth: the story of Reuters’ millions by John Lawrenson and Lionel Barber which will no doubt skim over Reuters’ connections to British intelligence.
Former Labour Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees, although he says he’s for Freedom of Information, will likewise be closemouthed in Northern Ireland: a personal perspective (Methuen)
Out soon from academic Dr. Christopher Andrews, Secret Service – a look at the British intelligence community from the Crimea to WW2. Andrews is going to present documentary evidence of “at least one Cambridge mole recruited by the Comintern in the mid 1920s” (Times 14 August 1984). I hope this new book is going to be better than The Missing Dimension, co-edited with David Dilks (Macmillan 1984) which is plain boring and unrevealing.
Blunt’s memoirs are apparently safely locked up in the British Library along with the Magna Carta. Out this year is Dear Anthony by American John Costello and BBC researcher Cherry Hughes. Hughes, who has spent three years researching the book, says “He was a lot more important than has so far been admitted. It’s been in the security services interest to downgrade him and, of course, he still has a number of acquaintances who don’t want these things written.” (Daily Express 14 August 1984). Susan Crosland is also writing a biography of Blunt for release in 1987(1).
SD