A brief introduction to British W.W.II stay behind networks

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016)

[PDF file]: […] and in his books that the role of the Auxiliary Units has been exaggerated by the passage of time. He argues that it was that efforts of MI6 which were most influential in the establishment of a staybehind network. I disagree – and not just because MI6 had insufficient resources within the UK for […]

Has a DNA test solved the Rudolf Hess doppelgänger mystery?

Lobster Issue 77 (Summer 2019)

[PDF file]: […] prisoner in Spandau. Karel Hille of the Dutch Tros channel produced a TV investigation titled De moord op de dubbelganger van Spandau, prompting the retired head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield, to arrange for Hille to be given a Foreign Office personal file on Rudolf Hess for safekeeping abroad. Sir Maurice, a historian by […]

An accidental tourist? A British connection to the death of Otto Warmbier

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] a covert meeting than New Year’s Eve. I don’t think it would be surprising if the NK government had a suspicion that Danny Gratton was working for MI6, perhaps as a member of ‘the increment’ (as it has been called in the past).13 But although quite a plausible initial case can be made that […]

Spookaroonie!

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010)

[PDF file]: Inside British Intelligence 100 years of MI5 and MI6 Gordon Thomas London: JR books, 2009, £20 Spooks The Unofficial History of MI5 Thomas Hennessy and Claire Thomas Stroud (Glos.): Amberley, 2009, £30 Robin Ramsay I haven’t properly read either of these books and cannot really review them. However, there are some things I can […]

Iraq and intelligence

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013)

[PDF file]: […] is a testimony to the resistance of the CIA’s intelligence analysts. In the UK the estimates from the two main agencies, the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) and MI6 (or SIS) are fed into the Joint Intelligence Committee which produces the final version. That, at least, is the theory. In practice, in this instance, the […]

A Diplomat’s Day by Geoffrey F. Hancock

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012)

[PDF file]: […] announced: ‘This is the personal account of the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1976 as seen through the eyes of the British Chargé d’Affaires and MI6 Head of Station in Beirut, Geoffrey Hancock.’ Oh, thought I, how many other memoirs by an MI6 Head of Station do we have? None that I […]

The Dungavel Handicap Scotland, Churchill and Rudolf Hess, 1941

Lobster Issue 81 (Summer 2021)

[PDF file]: […] of the Churchill government. Prior to departing on his mission for Finland, Borenius was briefed by Claude Dansey and sent with the knowledge of the head of MI6, Colonel See or and also or the conclusion of which appears to be at odds with the facts. 28 Quoted in Matthew & Harrison (eds.), The […]

Some agent protection issues and more comment on SIS PR

Lobster Issue 62 (Winter 2011)

[PDF file]: […] not always seem to understand, let alone know how to communicate, its own DNA. This was exemplified when, speaking to the Daily Telegraph about the history of MI6 he had commissioned while still SIS Chief, Sir John Scarlett explained: ‘In the language of those times, it was a profession that was respectable for gentlemen……Clearly, […]

Operation Chiffon by Peter Taylor

Lobster Issue 87 (2023)

[PDF file]: Operation Chiffon: The Secret Story of MI5 and MI6 and the Road to Peace in Ireland Peter Taylor London: Bloomsbury, 2023 Hardback, £17 Nick Must This, the most recent in a long line of Peter Taylor’s works on the conflict in Northern Ireland, has been described in other reviews as ‘compelling’,1 ‘a gripping exploration’2 […]

Taylor Operation Chiffon

Lobster Issue

Operation Chiffon: The Secret Story of MI5 and MI6 and the Road to Peace in Ireland Peter Taylor London: Bloomsbury, 2023 Hardback, £17 Nick Must This, the most recent in a long line of Peter Taylor’s works on the conflict in Northern Ireland, has been described in other reviews as ‘compelling’,1 ‘a gripping exploration’2 […]

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