Ivor Crewe and Anthony King Oxford University Press, 1995, £25 Few who lived through the launch of the Social Democratic Party are likely to forget the impact of the creation of the Gang of Four in 1981. The avowed intention of the four former Cabinet ministers was to offer Britain a fresh alternative – a … Read more
See note(1) The Conventional Wisdom It is generally assumed that the economist J. M. Keynes was instrumental in establishing the post-war Anglo-American economic relationship. The argument is that, along with the US Assistant Secretary to the Treasury Harry Dexter White, Keynes created the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (now … Read more
Spy Wars: Moles, mysteries and deadly games Tennent H. Begley London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, h/b, £18.99 Begley was one of James Angleton’s allies in CIA counterintelligence and this book is the Angletonian view of the Nosenko case, one of the touchstones or causes célèbres of the CIA in the post-war … 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
Nexus: postmodernism or what? I wonder what posterity will make of Nexus magazine. It continues to be just about the most fascinating and the most infuriating thing which plops through my letter-box. Take the April-May 2000 issue. On the positive side there is a very interesting and maybe very important piece on the soya bean, … Read more
(Or: I’m not paranoid, they really are out to get me) Armen Victorian On June 23, this year, after returning home with my children from their school, I noticed a red car parked in front of our house with two passengers, male and female, in it. After we entered, the male passenger, who was very … Read more
Olivier Schmidt Atlanta (USA): Clarity Press, 2005, $14.95, p/b www.bookmasters.com/clarity/currenttitles.htm Here’s a new name to me, the publisher Clarity; and a familiar one, Olivier Schmidt. In the 1980s Schmidt was producing a very good newsletter in Paris, Intelligence and Parapolitics. This got expensive, professionalised and eventually went on-line for subscribers as Intelligence.(1) This is … 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
U.S. President Bill Clinton has made a number of public references to the impresssion made on him as a young student by Professor Carroll Quigley. (1) As Lobster readers will know, Quigley was the author of Tragedy and Hope (U.S., MacMillan, 1966) in which he described for the first time the role of the Round … Read more
Robin Ramsay Often referred to in other things is Israeli Foreign Affairs, ‘an independent monthly report on Israel’s diplomatic and military activities world-wide’. It is 8 pages A4 and though this is not a subject I am interested in, this looks very impressive and is thoroughly documented. September 1988 includes (using IFA’s headlines) Jerusalem Christian … Read more
