I am a new member of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London. On a recent visit, I made use of the vast resources of a very well-stocked library at Chatham House and this book is the
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Tag: cold war
Chatham House: How Effective Are The United States’ Sanctions? 19.06.2023
Chatham House is the Royal Institute ofInternational Affairs. It is based in St. James’ Square, Mayfair, London, a short walk from Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. I have been a member of Chatham House for several months but with me being based
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Review: Defending The Realm – MI5 and The Shayler Affair – by Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding
This is just another one of the many books I’ve read on the security services / spies / intelligence agencies in general. I guess I have a morbid fascination. Non-fiction throws up some pretty weird stuff – Life itself is
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Review: Red Horizons – The True Story of Nicolae & Elena Ceausescus’ Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption – by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa
I was just chatting away to Ionutz a security nurse in the local mental hospital and he’s Romanian. I passed through Bucharest a few years ago en route to Istanbul on a train journey traversing Eastern Europe. Romania seemed quite
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Review: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Under the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev there was a post-Stalin easing of oppression emerging from the Kremlin and a Cold War ‘Victorian’ Ice Age thaw for writers allowed this remarkable, unique, little tale to unbelievably evade the censor and make
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Review: The Dragons and the Snakes – How The Rest Learned to Fight The West – by David Kilcullen
This is one of the very best books I have ever read. It is up to date material and full of cutting edge military theory and ideas and I believe is critical essential reading for any politician or military personnel,
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Review: The Dragons and the Snakes – How The Rest Learned to Fight The West – by David Kilcullen
This is one of the very best books I have ever read. It is up to date material and full of cutting edge military theory and ideas and I believe is critical essential reading for any politician or military personnel,
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Review: Red Notice – How I Became Putin’s No.1 Enemy – by Bill Browder
There is irony in this tale as Bill Browder was following in his grandfather’s footsteps in some ways but was also radically poles apart. Browder’s grandfather had stood for Presidential election in the USA on a Communist ticket. Bill Browder
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Review: Russians Among Us – Sleeper Cells & The Hunt for Putin’s Agents – by Gordon Correra
I’ve read Gordon Correra’s previous work in espionage literature and for this reason I was drawn to seek out this new offering. In the current climate of the Russian invasion of Ukraine under ex KGB spy, Vladimir Putin, I felt
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Review: Memoirs – by Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most influential and critical figures of the twentieth century. When I was growing up in the 1980s he was part os a set of international world leaders that seemingly had much more influence over
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Review: Putin’s People – How the KGB took back Russia and then took on The West – by Catherine Belton
The author of this, the best study of Vladimir Putin that I have read to date, is Catherine Belton, a Financial Times journalist that was based in Moscow. It is a comprehensive study of the rise of Putin and how
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Review: World Order – Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History – by Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger is a very famous international American statesman. This is the first book of his that I have read. I was drawn to exploring his views as I have always noticed him throughout my life as being a key
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Review: Hidden Hand – How The Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping The World – by Clive Hamilton & Mareike Ohlberg
As a committed sinophile, this recently written book seemed a necessity. As China continues its rise to being the most dominant national force economically on the planet, it is quite difficult to obtain meaningful and relevant and unbiased factual information
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Review: Stasiland – Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall – by Anna Funder
The Stasi were the brutal secret police in the GDR (German Democratic Republic) or East Germany. After the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, East and West Germany once again became reunited.
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Review: The Third Man and The Fallen Idol – by Graham Greene
Graham Greene is a classic early twentieth century English novelist. I remember studying Brighton Rock for my school GCSEs.The Third Man is set in the murky underworld of post World War 2 Vienna. The Austrian capital has been quartered into
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Review: Soldier Spy by Tom Marcus
I initially bought the second book in this series, I Spy, but on learning that this volume preceded it I thought it apt to try this one out first. It’s not a huge book and is very accessible. The autobiographical
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Review: The Billion Dollar Spy – by David E. Hoffman
This espionage thriller tells the true life story of one of the Cold War’s most valuable assets, a Russian spy working for the CIA in the heart of the Soviet military aerospace sector. Adolf Tolkachev made the first tentative moves
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Review: MI6 – Fifty Years of Special Operations – by Stephen Dorril
This detailed 800 page book covers fifty years of MI6, the UK’s foreign espionage service. From relatively humble beginnings during the second world war, MI6 grew to become a leading foe of Soviet Russia and its notorious KGB. The book
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Review: The Last Empire – The Final Days of the Soviet Union – by Serhii Plokhy
When the Soviet Union ended and thus the Cold War ended on Christmas Day 1991, it was probably one of the biggest political events of my lifetime. This well-researched, detailed book, by Ukrainian author Serhii Plokhy, details the last 18
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Review: The Art Of Betrayal – Life and Death in the British Secret Service – by Gordon Corera
They say that truth is often stranger than fiction and this book that I have given a 5 star rating reads very fluently and tells the real story of British secret service agents as they engage in the art of
Continue readingReview: The New Cold War – by Edward Lucas
The New Cold War by Edward Lucas My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is a study of Russia in the post-communist era. It documents the rise of Vladimir Putin and identifies the ‘new cold war’ that envelopes Russia’s
Continue readingReview: The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy – by Marifeli Pérez-Stable
The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy by Marifeli Pérez-Stable My rating: 3 of 5 stars I’m doing a university essay question on the Cuban Revolution so felt that this was a good text to read ahead of doing my
Continue readingReview: Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5
Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5 by Stella Rimington My rating: 4 of 5 stars I can remember the media furore when this book was first published though it’s taken me some time to get around
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