Jon Swaine
‘Invisible, Unseen, Unverifiable’
Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Shadow of a Secret Nuclear Facility
By Kristen Iversen
Harvill Secker 400pp £14.99 order from our bookshop
Should a government tell its citizens what it is doing secretly on their behalf to keep them safe, when it might end up harming them too? Strangely it is a question still rarely asked in the debate over national security in the United States, eleven years into its long War on Terror. Might, for instance, Barack Obama’s pseudo-secret drone campaign in Pakistan and Yemen be dangerously radicalising the families of fallen civilians even while eradicating the immediate threat of plots to attack Americans in their offices and homes?
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In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency