Kelly Bond 007 essay

Lobster Issue

[…] But being sympathetic with communists fighting fascism was not the same as being a spy. During the war Ian Fleming knew Philby when he served as the MI6 man in the Iberian peninsula (that included Spain and Portugal), and Fleming was the Assistant to the Chief of British Naval Intelligence Admiral Godfrey. Fleming had […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] government’s Institute for Statecraft (and the Integrity Initiative which it created) as an attempt ‘to try and combat Russian disinformation’. ‘Nonsense’, wrote Klarenberg. ‘IFS/II was a NATO/ MI6 front organisation concerned with starting war with Russia.’ Well no, actually, it wasn’t. Begun in 2015, apparently as a response to the Russian annexing of the […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] government’s Institute for Statecraft (and the Integrity Initiative which it created) as an attempt ‘to try and combat Russian disinformation’. ‘Nonsense’, wrote Klarenberg. ‘IFS/II was a NATO/ MI6 front organisation concerned with starting war with Russia.’ Well no, actually, it wasn’t. Begun in 2015, apparently as a response to the Russian annexing of the […]

Team mercenary GB: Part 2 – This is the modern world

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017)

[PDF file]: […] many of the UK based PMCs have connections to, or directly employ, ex-UK Special Forces (SF) personnel. In the case of ArmorGroup, employees also included former senior MI6 officer Andrew Fulton,1 2 who has also been Chair of the Scottish Conservative Party. The listed contact for ArmorGroup in Iraq is ‘Country Manager’ John Farr […]

In the Thick of It: The private diaries of a minister Alan Duncan

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] as Foreign Secretary Johnson switching Carrie Symonds, now his wife, from Conservative Party HQ employment to become his FCO special adviser. His social arrangements – seeing ex- MI6 chief Sir John Scarlett dining with former US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff – point to a world most of us rarely glimpse but whose actions […]

A Spy Alone by Charles Beaumont

Lobster Issue 88 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] 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. It is set in post–2020 UK, with a recognizable Boris […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] students.5 Among the luminaries are the Daily Telegraph’s Con Coughlin, who is a Senior Visiting Fellow.6 His profile is light on any detail, especially his relationship with MI6. Enter ‘Coughlin’ into the search engine on Lobster’s home page and you’ll get the fuller drift. Many of the ex-spooks are quite open about their past […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] it more carefully, I was struck by the omission from this account of the role played by Oleg Penkovsky, the GRU colonel who was providing SIS ( MI6) – and thus the Americans – with detailed information on Soviet nuclear weaponry. Crucially, Penkovsky told SIS how few missiles the Soviets actually had and that […]

MI5 speaks to the nation!

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020)

[PDF file]: MI5 speaks to the nation! Nick Must ‘How MI5 is adapting to fight coronavirus’1 was the headline on a BBC news online piece by Gordon Corera. In relation to that potential change in working practices, it quoted soon-to-depart MI5 chief, Sir Andrew Parker, thus: ‘You’ll understand if I don’t go into exactly the ways in […]

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