Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003) £££
Richard M Bennett London: Virgin Books, 2003 £20 hardback This is 350 pages of summaries of political and historical conspiracies. It starts in 2330 BC but the first 2007 years take up only 84 pages. The content is mostly Anglo-American, especially after WW2. It is done chronologically, so you get odd sequences of subjects: … Read more
Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996) £££
Scott et al I do have a copy of the Scott Report but I simply have not had time to read it. It seems pretty clear from the comments of a number of the knowledgeable minority who have followed this story for the past few years that, for whatever reason, Scott and his team have … Read more
Lobster Issue 25 (1993) £££
Anthony Summers Gollancz, London, £18.99 Summers and his team of researchers have proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Hoover was gay and that he had been bought off and blackmailed by the Mob into ignoring organised crime. (I am less convinced by the evidence supporting the secondary allegations that Hoover was a transvestite.) Hoover, in … Read more
Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££
Rogue State: A guide to the world’s only superpower William Blum Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2000, $16.95 Globalize This! The battle against the World Trade Organization and corporate rule eds. Kevin Danaher and Roger Burbach Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2000, $15.95 I have lumped these together partly because they are both published … Read more
Lobster Issue 25 (1993) £££
by Peter Padfield Papermac, London, 1993, £12.99 There are now several versions of the Hess affair. One is the official story – a politician whose star is one the wane, attempts a spectacular comeback, fails, is locked up for forty years and finally commits suicide in despair. Another is the double theory, first outlined in … Read more
Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996) £££
Parish Notices Mrs Anthony Verney died in early March this year. With her husband, Anthony, she was irradiated by persons unknown, for reasons unknown, at their retirement home in Kent. She is the first UK fatality of which I am aware resulting from the new generation of electro-magnetic weaponry; and it says much about this … Read more
Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002) £££
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
Lobster Issue 25 (1993) £££
There have been several notable assaults on the good ship Lobster since number 24. On Thursday, 19 November 1992 a journalist researching a piece on MI6 rang me. He said had been to talk to the KGB defector, Oleg Gordiefsky, who told him that the KGB were big fans of Lobster. Since Gordiefky defected in … Read more
Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££
Conference Report by Jane Affleck On November 10 2000 the Freedom Forum’s European Centre in London, in association with Article 19, Index on Censorship and Liberty, hosted a debate on National Security. (1) Three panels spoke on The Nature of National Security, British State Security in Northern Ireland, and The Internet – Circumventing Censorship? The … Read more
Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££
The Paris Review (PR hereafter except in quotations) has a new editor. Philip Gourevitch, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner for his book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda and a writer for The New Yorker, has taken the position that was held … Read more