DIVDIVA tour de force account of seduction, power, and betrayal in the biggest political sex scandal of its age/divDIV The Profumo Affair rocked the British establishment like no scandal before or since. The Tory war minister, John Profumo, had taken up with a teenager named Christine Keeler, who was also sleeping with a Soviet intelligence agent. The ensuing inquiry revealed a hidden underworld in which men of the ruling classes and politicians cavorted with prostitutes at orgies. The revelations shook the British government and sent shock waves all the way to the Kennedy White House. The man at the center of the storm was Dr. Stephen Ward./divDIV Ward was a successful doctor to the rich and powerful, a talented artist who drew portraits of many of his famous patients and fixed up prominent men with young women. He was also a pawn, ruthlessly exploited by the intelligence agencies. When the Profumo Affair threatened the government, Ward became a scapegoat, hounded to death—and perhaps murdered./divDIV For the first time, The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward reveals the names that could not be exposed and the truths that could not be told until now./divDIV/div/div
A comprehensive history of the UK government overseas intelligence service, known as MI6. Among other topics, it covers the postwar recruitment of former Nazis; anticommunist campaigns in the Baltic; Operation Stalin; a European terrorist network; and the dealings of Blake, Penkowsky and Philby.
DIVDIVA tour de force account of seduction, power, and betrayal in the biggest political sex scandal of its age/divDIV The Profumo Affair rocked the British establishment like no scandal before or since. The Tory war minister, John Profumo, had taken up with a teenager named Christine Keeler, who was also sleeping with a Soviet intelligence agent. The ensuing inquiry revealed a hidden underworld in which men of the ruling classes and politicians cavorted with prostitutes at orgies. The revelations shook the British government and sent shock waves all the way to the Kennedy White House. The man at the center of the storm was Dr. Stephen Ward./divDIV Ward was a successful doctor to the rich and powerful, a talented artist who drew portraits of many of his famous patients and fixed up prominent men with young women. He was also a pawn, ruthlessly exploited by the intelligence agencies. When the Profumo Affair threatened the government, Ward became a scapegoat, hounded to death—and perhaps murdered./divDIV For the first time, The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward reveals the names that could not be exposed and the truths that could not be told until now./divDIV/div/div
What is the long-term nature of American foreign policy? This new book refutes the claim that it has varied considerably across time and space, arguing that key policies have been remarkably stable over the last hundred years, not in terms of ends but of means. Closely examining US foreign policy, past and present, David Sylvan and Stephen Majeski draw on a wealth of historical and contemporary cases to show how the US has had a 'client state' empire for at least a century. They clearly illustrate how much of American policy revolves around acquiring clients, maintaining clients and engaging in hostile policies against enemies deemed to threaten them, representing a peculiarly American form of imperialism. They also reveal how clientilism informs apparently disparate activities in different geographical regions and operates via a specific range of policy instruments, showing predictable variation in the use of these instruments. With a broad range of cases from US policy in the Caribbean and Central America after the Spanish-American War, to the origins of the Marshall Plan and NATO, to economic bailouts and covert operations, and to military interventions in South Vietnam, Kosovo and Iraq, this important book will be of great interest to students and researchers of US foreign policy, security studies, history and international relations. This book has a dedicated website at: www.us-foreign-policy-prespective.org featuring additional case studies and data sets.
Brimming with insights into Middle Eastern history and American foreign policy, this book is an eye-opening look at an event whose unintended consequences--Islamic revolution and violent anti-Americanism--have shaped the modern world.
Fay Taylour (1904-1983) remains the most successful female motorsports champion. She defeated the foremost male motorcycle speedway stars of the 1920s and 1930s. A household name in Britain and her native Ireland, she won further fame on the track in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Her successes against men led to a ban on women competing against them in the UK, but Fay Taylour carried on, racing around the world. She also built a new career in long distance car racing and carved a name for herself in the new sport of midget car racing. All of this came to a halt with the outbreak of the Second World War, which, controversially, saw Fay Taylour join Oswald Mosley’s fascist movement and become part of an underground pro-Hitler campaign in London. She was imprisoned for three years by the British authorities. After the war, she was one of the very few pre-war women motorsports champions to return to the track. She re-established her career with highly successful tours in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, before moving to the USA. There she first sold sports cars in Hollywood before returning to midget-car racing across America. Later banned from the USA for her earlier politics, she again took to racetracks around the world, competing against the world’s best well into her fifties. This first full biography of Fay Taylour is based on her extensive personal papers, media reports of her racing career around the world, and decades of UK government security files. It covers Taylour’s life on and off the track, her struggles with sports and security authorities, her battles against anti-female prejudices, and her many passionate love affairs.
A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today's world During the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world. John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world? The Brothers explores hidden forces that shape the national psyche, from religious piety to Western movies—many of which are about a noble gunman who cleans up a lawless town by killing bad guys. This is how the Dulles brothers saw themselves, and how many Americans still see their country's role in the world. Propelled by a quintessentially American set of fears and delusions, the Dulles brothers launched violent campaigns against foreign leaders they saw as threats to the United States. These campaigns helped push countries from Guatemala to the Congo into long spirals of violence, led the United States into the Vietnam War, and laid the foundation for decades of hostility between the United States and countries from Cuba to Iran. The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world. A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013
Within two years of their abortive invasion of the Suez Canal zone in 1956, British troops once again intervened in a major Middle Eastern country. The Jordan intervention of July 1958 took place despite the steady decline of the British position in the country over the previous three years. This book examines why the government led by Harold Macmillan remained ready to use military force to prop up the regime of King Hussein even though the United States had emerged as the main Western power in the Middle East after 1956. Incorporating a variety of archival material, Blackwell provides new historical insights into the origins of the Anglo-American use of military power to protect their interests in the Middle East.
The bestselling author of Overthrow offers a new and surprising vision for rebuilding America's strategic partnerships in the Middle East What can the United States do to help realize its dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East? Stephen Kinzer offers a surprising answer in this paradigm-shifting book. Two countries in the region, he argues, are America's logical partners in the twenty-first century: Turkey and Iran. Besides proposing this new "power triangle," Kinzer also recommends that the United States reshape relations with its two traditional Middle East allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. This book provides a penetrating, timely critique of America's approach to the world's most volatile region, and offers a startling alternative. Kinzer is a master storyteller with an eye for grand characters and illuminating historical detail. In this book he introduces us to larger-than-life figures, like a Nebraska schoolteacher who became a martyr to democracy in Iran, a Turkish radical who transformed his country and Islam forever, and a colorful parade of princes, politicians, women of the world, spies, oppressors, liberators, and dreamers. Kinzer's provocative new view of the Middle East is the rare book that will richly entertain while moving a vital policy debate beyond the stale alternatives of the last fifty years.
Lionel ‘Robby’ Robinson (1866-1922), Australian financier made good, settled at Old Buckenham Hall in the Norfolk countryside. There he hosted the 1912 South African tourists, the 1919 Australian AIF team, and most famously and intriguingly Warwick Armstrong’s 1921 Australians. Former England captain Archie MacLaren ran Robinson’s cricket affairs. The ‘country house’ hospitality drew many of the notable players of the era, such as Michael Falcon. Stephen Musk roots his story in Norfolk, and the wider world of cricket, and traces links to MacLaren’s famous win over the 1921 tourists at Eastbourne.
The old world of spying-dead-letter boxes, microfilm cameras, an enemy reporting to the Moscow Center, and a hint of sexual blackmail-is history. The spymaster's technique has changed and the enemy has, too. He or she now frequently comes from a culture far removed from Western understanding and is part of a less well-organized group. The new enemy is constantly evolving and prepared to kill the innocent. In the face of this new threat, the spymasters of the world shunned human intelligence as the primary way to glean clandestine information and replaced it with an obsession that focuses on the technical methods of spying ranging from the use of high-definition satellite photography to the global interception of communications. However, this obsession with technology has failed, most spectacularly, with the devastation of the 9/11 attacks. In this searing modern history of espionage, Stephen Grey takes us from the CIA's Cold War legends, to the agents who betrayed the IRA, through to the spooks inside Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Techniques and technologies have evolved, but the old motivations for betrayal-patriotism, greed, revenge, compromise-endure. Based on years of research and interviews with hundreds of secret sources, Stephen Grey's The New Spymasters is an up-to-date exposé that shows how spycraft's human factor is once again being used to combat the world's deadliest enemies.
When the Beatles burst onto the pop scene in 1962, they not only took the music world by storm but they also brought with them a counter culture that was to have far-reaching effects. With their long hair, humour and irreverent attitude towards authority, they were a breath of fresh air to a generation who had grown weary of the greyness of the post-war years. Beatlemania was to unleash a revolution against an outdated age. The 1950s with its oppressive and authoritarian attitudes was ready for change and young people, desperate to escape suburbia with its stifling formality, were set to lead that rebellion. In politics, fashion, education, the arts, religion, television, women’s rights and universities, the time had come to challenge the old order. And in came the swinging sixties with its more liberal attitudes offering hope of change and a more peaceful and just world. The introduction of the contraceptive pill, legalized abortion, gay rights, easier divorce and the relaxing of censorship were all part of this social revolution. And it wasn’t just in Britain. The influence of the Beatles reverberated across Europe and, most of all, in America where teenagers not only campaigned against a war in Vietnam but also for civil rights in their own country. This book tells the story of the Sixties and how the Beatles’ influence had such an impact on British society. It’s a social history of Britain told by Stephen Kelly who regularly watched the Beatles at the Cavern and experienced first hand the changes that were to take place.
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