Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War Against Jewish Terrorism 1945-1948 David Cesarani London: William Heinemann, 2009, h/b, £20 On 6 May 1947 a British undercover squad, under the command of Major Roy Farran, picked up sixteen-year-old Alexander Rubowitz, a young Zionist activist. He was taken away for ‘interrogation’. After an hour of … Read more
Following the initial investigation by the West Mercia Police, there have been over a dozen reviews of this extraordinary case. Reviewers include Robert Green, (1) Tam Dalyell MP, (2) Graham Smith,(3) World in Action,(4) BBC Crimewatch,(5) John Osborne,(6) Amanda Mitchison, (7) Bob Parker (8); and more recently, David Cole and Peter Acland, (9) Nick Davies,(10) … Read more
The Dirty War Martin Dillon, Hutchinson, London, 1990. The SAS in Ireland Raymond Murray, Mercier Press, Cork and Dublin, 1991 Martin Dillon is a freelance journalist in Northern Ireland with a long career behind him: editor and radio presenter for the BBC in Northern Ireland, co-author of the Penguin Special, Political Murder In Northern Ireland … Read more
Brothers: The hidden history of the Kennedy years David Talbot London: Simon and Schuster, 2007, h/b, £20 Another Kennedy book? Yes, but a good one. Talbot may not have anything new of substance to tell us about the assassination per se but has much new material about events before and after it. Talbot’s JFK … Read more
Secret Intelligence and the Holocaust Ed. David Bankier New York: Enigma Books, 2006. p/b, $23 US Intelligence and the Nazis Richard Breitman et al New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p/b, £16.99 On 11 January 1943, the British intercepted ‘one of the most extraordinary messages’ of the war at Bletchley Park: it referred ‘to … Read more
[…] Murrell was not only under surveillance before her murder but that on the day of the crime she attracted two different hit squads who turned up to kill her and ended up squabbling about who should do the job.’ Except it isn’t Otter’s theory. Laurens Otter comments: ‘Nick Davies’s claim about my “latest theory” […]
[…] was hesitant about the embassy in Saigon because he could not trust his people there. So he called on Torby who … told Diem “They’re going to kill you. You’ve got to get out of there temporarily to seek sanctuary in the American Embassy”. Diem refused. Parmet just drops this into his section on […]
[…] research by an individual? I cannot think of one. Some of this material was presented in greater detail in Pepper’s first book on the case, Orders to Kill (reviewed in Lobster 32). This new account briefly reruns that and adds much new information and an account of the successful civil trial Pepper brought against […]
[…] little to the sum of knowledge on the issue, it could well have been left alone until more was known.’ On the other hand in ‘Shoot to Kill’, the author is convinced. Dorril writes: ‘Those who accuse the British government of a shoot to kill policy in Northern Ireland, in the sense of a […]
The Last Supper: The Mafia, the Masons and the killing of Roberto Calvi Philip Willan London: Robinson, 2007, £7.99, p/b Willan wrote the wonderful The Puppet Masters about post-war Italian politics and this is more of the same, a smaller patch examined in more detail. Never mind the subtitle: yes, he does reexamine the … Read more
