How many divisions does the Pope have?

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Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3) £££

The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina Uki Goni London: Granta Books, 2002, £20 If there was a category of work called Detective History, Uki Goni really ought to be awarded Book of the Year. Undeterred by the shredding and incineration of key documents, rebuffs from the supporters of Peron … Read more

Oscar Wilde’s Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy and the First World War

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Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££

Philip Hoare, Duckworth Press, London, 1997, £16.99 The opening of MI5’s archives up to and including 1919 gives historians and researchers the chance to exhume the genesis of the right in British domestic politics as well as the early activities of the secret state. Despite its title (Oscar died in 1900) Hoare dips quite a … Read more

Acid: a new secret history of LSD

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Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002) £££

David Black London:Vision Paperbacks, 20001, £9.99 This a revised edition of the book which was reviewed in Lobster 35. I’m not sure how new it is. I no longer have the original edition but this seems pretty similar to it. What is new is some material on the activities of Steve Abrams, one of the … Read more

The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence

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Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

Richard J. Aldrich London: John Murray, 2001, £25   Another huge book, 645 pages of text and 70 pages of index, bibliographies and notes. How do you review something this size? I simply don’t know. Short of doing a London Review of Books-sized job and working through it chapter by chapter, all I can really … Read more

Plotting for Peace and War

Lobster Issue 22 (1991) £££

Ten Days that Saved the West John Costello Bantam Press 1991 John Costello has set out to provide, in the words of the publisher’s blurb, “the first behind the scenes account of the agonizing history of 1940′. His aim is to debunk the Churchillian myth that in 1940 Britain was united in its determination to … Read more

The Pinay Circle and Destabilisation in Europe

Lobster Issue 18 (1989) £££

In Lobster 17 we published two German intelligence reports on a covert propaganda group called the Pinay Circle. In this article we give background and investigate the Pinay Circle’s activities. Member of Parliament ‘G’: I don’t know if it (the Pinay Circle) has any political significance, but, in any case, it has little impact. For … Read more

The Jew of Linz: Wittgenstein, Hitler and their Secret Battle for the Mind

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Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

Kimberley Cornish London: Arrow, 1999, £7.99 On p. 86 of this enthralling book Kimberley Cornish invites readers to complete the following sentence: ‘Wittgenstein was offered the Chair in Philosophy at Lenin’s university [Kazan] in 1935 because…’ What possible reason can there be except that he was serving the Soviet regime? Cornish contends that Wittgenstein recruited … Read more

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