Stephen Dorril
Our Men In Las Palmas
Franco’s Friends: How British Intelligence Helped Bring Franco to Power in Spain
By Peter Day
Biteback 384pp £19.99
The welcome release by the National Archives over the last decade of a huge batch of wartime files from the Security Service (MI5), and the availability of previously secret documents from other agencies such as the Special Operations Executive – now matched by the publication of the ‘official histories’ of MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) – has led to the publication of a growing number of intelligence-related biographies and histories. Some are very good, but often the reliance on the files at Kew has led to lazy research and publications that are little more than histories of the files (which mostly have been weeded and should be treated as unreliable and self-serving) rather than histories of an event or organisation. Christopher Andrew’s history of the Security Service, which used openly published material to flesh out the anonymous files, was a success; but Keith Jeffery’s history of the Secret Intelligence Service, which relied totally on the Service’s still-secret registry files, illuminated very little. Sometimes it takes a journalist to identify what is interesting and dig out that extra piece of research that makes a book worthwhile.
Retired Daily Mail journalist Peter Day has produced an admirably short book primarily based on recently released files at the National Archives, which he has supplemented with other sources. He has managed to pull together a wonderful tale of British Catholic eccentrics, intelligence agents from the 1930s world
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm