Paul Bruce Blake Publishing, London 1995, £15.99 The pseudonymous author claims to have been a member of a clandestine 4-man SAS squad which assassinated a couple of dozen alleged IRA members in the 1971-3 period in Northern Ireland. The author’s taped and transcribed memories are intercut with sections from an uncredited ghost writer – apparently … Read more
Kenn Thomas Illuminet Press, Lilburn, GA 30048 USA, 1999, $14.95 www.illuminetpress.com The Crisman in the book’s title is a man called Fred Lee Crisman who is one of only two people who were involved at the beginning of the American UFO saga and who appear in the Kennedy assassination story. The other one is … Read more
In its own communications, evangelical Christianity exists in a delirious present but it has a rich and recoverable history. Evangelical religion can and should be explained in part in terms of the response of the millions of the faithful to the experience of modernity. But while secular intellectuals sometimes see it simply as a mechanism … Read more
From Anger to Apathy: the British Experience since 1975 Mark Garnett (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007) Dead Men Don’t Eat Lunch Geoffrey Gilson (self-published) Beyond Bullets Jules Boykoff’s AK Press, 2007: <www.akuk.com> Briefly Mark Garnett’s From Anger to Apathy: the British Experience since 1975 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007) has had some fairly sniffy reviews but I … Read more
Paul Johnson, former editor of the New Statesman turned ‘new right’ Thatcherite, turned his hack hand to KAL 007 in a review of Alexander Dallin’s Black Box KAL 007 and the Superpowers (University of California Press 1985) in the Times Literary Supplement (August 23 1985). Johnson asks the question: “How could a Korean pilot skilful … Read more
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
Ivan Molloy London: Pluto Press, 2001, £18.99/£55 In the 1980s the resurgent US military and neo-conservatives were in a bind: faced with a variety of challenges to the American economic empire, the enormous military power they possessed was constrained by PR considerations; American parents who didn’t want their children dying abroad (the so-called ‘Vietnam … Read more
Conspiracy, Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Research Robin Ramsay ‘The unexpected and dramatic death of the famous, whether statesmen like John F Kennedy, or media stars like Marilyn Monroe, invariably give rise to conspiracy theories.’ Thus Cambridge historian, Christopher Andrew, during his disgraceful hatchet job on Hugh Thomas’ books about Rudolph Hess for BBC2 ‘s Timewatch … Read more
Ideas and Think Tanks in Contemporary Britain: Volume 1 edited by Michael David Kandiah and Anthony Seldon Frank Cass, London/Portland, Oregon, 1996 £29.50 As the title suggests this really contains two separate though not unrelated areas. The first is a series of shortish essays about so-called think tanks in the UK which follow on from … Read more
Gary Murray Simon and Schuster, London, 1993 For twenty five years Gary Murray worked as an RAF policeman and private investigator. In the early 1970s Murray ‘unexpectedly’ (invitation?) joined the Operations Intelligence cadre of 21 SAS, and this led to close contact with people from MI6, Army SIB, the Royal Military Police and the Parachute … Read more
