Spooks

Lobster Issue 22 (1991)

[…] (HEE Proceedings, vol. 132, Pt. 1, No. 4, July 1989). Viscount Ruthven: Section D (MI6) Cairo with Freya Stark (Sunday Telegraph 5 August 1990). Commander Bill Emmet: MI5 Italy WW2 (Daily Telegraph 2 November 1985). G.J. Deverell: MI6 station chief Budapest 1941 (Letter, The Times, 22 April 1991). Douglas Gordon: British Consul-General Aden, expelled […]

Spook-wise: MI6 and Clare Short

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1)

[…] MI5/dirty pictures case from 1964…….. and it still isn’t clear to me what was going on. One of the articles the world might have survived without is ‘MI5, 1909-1945: an information management perspective’ by Black and Brunt in the Journal of Information Sciences, 26 (3) 2000. What next, the Kennedy assassination: a catering perspective? […]

The Tory Right between the wars

Lobster Issue 15 (1988)

[…] interesting – but isolated – anecdotes is not enough. For example, he flatly asserts that “the ACMA’s (Authorised Competent Military Authorities) were both conduit and catspaw of MI5”, but gives only one example. (Do we even know how big MI5 was at this point?) Part of this national surveillance effort was done by “an […]

PR, Iraq and ‘the allies’

Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003)

[…] Cradock, Know your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World (London: John Murray, 2002). 25 This is one reason why I was not surprised when MI5 announced the preparation of its official history – a best-seller in the making, with I assume, the profits on this occasion going to the taxpayer – […]

SISies: MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations and A Life: A. J. Ayer

Book cover
Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1)

[…] then mainly in Europe. This isn’t overly eurocentric on Dorril’s part: his preface states that he intends to publish another volume on the roles of MI6 and MI5 with reference to counter-insurgency in the Third World. This will give more attention to South East Asia and Africa than was possible in the present volume. […]

Wilson, MI5 and the rise of Thatcher

Lobster Issue

Wilson, MI5 and the rise of Thatcher Covert operations in British politics 1974-1978 Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril Introduction: Kevin McNamara MP Any person who lived through the anguished days from November 1973 until Wilson’s resignation will recall the high level of anticipation, expectation, surprise and wonder about what would be the next story […]

Wilson, MI5 and the rise of Thatcher

Lobster Issue 11 (April 1986)

[PDF file]: […] resignation as Prime Minister, Harold Wilson made a number of charges about South African activities in British politics, and, more interesting and more serious, expressed anxieties about MI5 in relation to the Labour Government of the day and to himself personally. There was brief flurry of interest in the media and the House of […]

TO CATCH A SPY: How the Spycatcher Affair Brought MI5 in from the Cold by Tim Tate

Lobster Issue 89 (2024)

[PDF file]: TO CATCH A SPY How the Spycatcher Affair Brought MI5 in from the Cold Tim Tate London: Icon, h/b, £25 Robin Ramsay The publisher sent me a pre-publication proof copy of this on spec and my initial reaction was: Is there really any need to go over this old ground again? Turns out, there […]

The Secret War Between the Wars MI5 in the 1920s and 1930s by Kevin Quinlan

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015)

[PDF file]: The Secret War Between the Wars MI5 in the 1920s and 1930s Kevin Quinlan Woodbridge (Suffolk): The Boydell Press, 2014, £30, h/b T his began as the author’s PhD thesis, based on the MI5 files of the interwar period, and it details some of their successes against the British left who were getting money […]

Stalin’s granny

Book review
Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)

[…] of their instinctive pro-Soviet bias, which took a long time to shed. There is also an interesting account of the political manoeuvrings around Metrokhin and Norwood as MI5 and SIS tried to establish their respective spin on the story. SIS, who wanted a prosecution of Norwood (to show MI5 incompetence, I presume), gave the […]

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