No Alarms and No Surprises. Please May 22nd 2017, 22.31 (BST) On Monday, May 22nd 2017, Salman Abedi walked into the City Room foyer at the Manchester Arena at Hunts Bank in Central Manchester and detonated an explosive suicide device. Within seconds, the innocent giddy replay of post-concert highlights as the kids typed-in messages and…
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Spy Comedy in Hastings
On January 27th 1905, the Daily News announced that a “special staff of Russian police spies” had arrived in London. [1] The following month, the New York Times and The Daily Express would publish a more detailed report based on an interview with Vladimir Burtsev’s colleague, Georgii Ivanovich Rabinovitch, claiming much the same thing, only…
16 Percy Circus, St Pancras — 1905
Why was Vladimir Lenin lodging with Liberal Candidate Philip Whitwell Wilson and his family at the height of the first Russian Revolution in 1905 and how did his friend and press colleague, Henry Brailsford get embroiled in an assassination attempt at the Hotel Bristol in St Petersburg that same year? Listen the 17-minute podcast summary…
George Shanks and the Protocols Matrix
On the 100th anniversary of the book being exposed as a forgery, a recent discovery I made in the archives in Dublin suggests that the 1920 British translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (The Jewish Peril) was not the work of ‘lone wolf’ anti-Semite George Shanks, but part of a sophisticated propaganda…
Americanism & the Catholic Church in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.” “You can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously.“Why of course you can!” He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. The Great Gatbsy With…
Forgotten Man — F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Fascist Neighbours, American Dream in Crisis
In the 1930s, F. Scott Fitzgerald, suffering personal and professional decline, struggled for recognition as The Great Gatsby faded from memory. Amid Zelda’s worsening mental health and the rise of American fascism, Fitzgerald mingled with Marxist intellectuals and radicals in Asheville, North Carolina. Among his neighbours was the American fascist, William Dudley Pelley. But what…
Jaakoff Prelooker — Under the Russian and British Flags
What brought Alexis Sheftel to Hastings is likely to consist of little more than guesswork but there are some clues, some of which bring us back round to bomb-making librarian, Alexei Teplov and his life after leaving Paris. But before we do that, we first need to take a look at the man who was…
‘Zionism versus Bolshevism’ – Winston Churchill, Illustrated Sunday Herald
Content warning: In the following story and podcast I am going to be shining the spotlight on some very unpleasant material. We’ll be dealing with issues of race and ethnicity, so use your discretion and prioritize your wellbeing. Churchill’s ‘Zionism versus Bolshevism’ for the Illustrated Sunday Herald must rank as one of the most controversial…
Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own – F. Scott Fitzgerald
When my wife gifted me with a copy of The Woman’s Home Companion, I came across an item that hasn’t been seen for over a hundred years. It’s from the pen of F. Scott Fitzgerald and it is the brief explanation he provided for his article, ‘Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own’. The…
Arthur Mizener talks to Mary Margaret McBride January 1951
With only so many days of the Gatsby centenary to go, I thought I’d share this: Scott Fitzgerald’s first biographer, Arthur Mizener, talking to Mary Margaret McBride about his new book, The Far Side of Paradise, in January 1951. The book was a milestone in the creation of the Fitzgerald legend and was published almost…