U.K. Archives - DJ Wez G

June 17, 2023 wezg

Review: Queens of the Crusades – by Alison Weir

I had previously read Alison Weir’s most excellent book specifically on Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine many years ago so the author was familiar to me. I chanced upon this title in my local library (Caldicot) and thought I’d give it

June 4, 2023 wezg

Erdoğan’s Third Term as President of Turkey and What It Means

On May 28th 2023, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was giving a victory speech to the excited Turkish masses, who had democratically elected him to a third term as President of Turkey. He achieved 52.2% of the vote in the second round

May 18, 2023 wezg

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

May 16, 2023 wezg

Review: The Assault On Truth – Boris Johnson and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism – by Peter Oborne

I think everyone that has ever heard of Boris Johnson associates him with lies. Oborne, who is an established veteran political journalist, in this relatively brief text, exposes the extent of the former Conservative Prime Minister’s almost total aversion to

May 11, 2023 wezg

Review: We May Win We May Lose – by Jim ‘Shaft’ Ryan

Jim ‘Shaft’ Ryan is a famous house music DJ from Birmingham who along with his brothers, Mick and Dermot, and their mate Lee, responsible for the seminary U.K. and global nightclub brands, Miss Moneypennys and Chuff Chuff. Jim is also

May 9, 2023 wezg

Review: Rights of Man – by Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine is an important writer at an important time that bequeaths us in his ‘Rights of Man’ a fundamental shakeup of what our democratic rights as citizens should be, drawing especially on the French Revolution and also American Revolution

May 8, 2023 wezg

Review: The Origins of Totalitariansm – by Hannah Arendt

This book is quite old, first published in 1951, it dates from a period when the totalitarian reality of Hitler and Stalin were very much fresh in the mind. Hannah Arendt was a German Jew and this work is both

April 4, 2023 wezg

Review: Forty Nights – by Chris Thrall

I read ‘Eating Smoke’ some time ago, Chris’ autobiographic story of descent into Crystal Meth psychosis while working for the Triads in Hong Kong. It was a great story and I loved that book. I noticed that Chris was appearing

February 4, 2023 wezg

Review: Our Man in Havana – by Graham Greene

Graham Greene delivers here a classic espionage novel, fiction, set in Cuba around the time of the revolution, Greene writes in his knowledgeable subject area of expertise a comedy account of a chance vacuum salesman being recruited by Mi6 as

January 18, 2023 wezg

Review: Heart of Darkness – by Joseph Conrad

I love Apocalypse Now. It is one of my most favourite films. I learnt that apparently, Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ is the literary work that provides the basic narrative of the film. Apocalypse Now, however is set in war

January 16, 2023 wezg

Review: Kim – by Rudyard Kipling

‘Kim’ is recognised as the greatest work of famous author Rudyard Kipling. This is a cult novel especially in espionage circles. It is fiction but documents the widely popular Great Game between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia, a clandestine

December 8, 2022 wezg

Review: Life After Dark – A History of British Nightclubs & Music Venues – by Dave Haslam

I got excited when this book arrived on my doorstep. At first glance it has all the key ingredients for a great book. Hacienda DJ author, history of British nightclubs – I expected lots of gory detail and exciting anecdotes

December 8, 2022 wezg

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

December 3, 2022 wezg

Review: In The Shadow of Papillon – Seven Years of Hell in Venezuela’s Prison System – by Frank Kane with John Tilsley

Frank Kane and his girlfriend, Sam, after their business was failing in the U.K. made the fateful decision to become cocaine drug couriers in Venezuela. Whilst attempting to fly out from the airport on Caribbean Island, Isla de Margarita, the

November 19, 2022 wezg

Review: The Great Game – On Secret Service in High Asia – by Peter Hopkirk

The Great Game, as immortalised by Rudyard Kipling in ‘Kim’ was the nineteenth century adventures in espionage between Russia and the U.K. across Central Asia. Both sides were on the verge of a full on military confrontation and sought advantage.

November 19, 2022 wezg

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

November 10, 2022 wezg

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

October 14, 2022 wezg

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

October 14, 2022 wezg

Review: Behind The Enigma – The Authorised History of GCHQ – Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency – by John Ferris

This is a weighty tome (800 plus pages) and the authoritative history of perhaps the least glamorous of the U.K.’s principal security services. However, the facts illustrated in this book clearly demonstrates the critical role GCHQ plays in national security

October 6, 2022 wezg

Review: The Near East Since The First World War – by M.E.Yapp

This book was written in 1990 and is thus a bit dated. The postscript announces the start of the first Gulf War after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Post World War 1 saw most of the current political boundaries drawn

September 1, 2022 wezg

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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