An article written by rights activist, Henry Moskowitz, in February 1918, said that to understand Leon Trotsky’s infamous sudden visit to the Lower East Side of New York in January the previous year, you also had to understand the local landscape upon which his “powerful figure” was “silhouetted”. Its streets “were black with men, women…
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald at the Embassy Club, London
During their stays in London in 1921 and 1925, their London host, Shane Leslie, introduced Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald to an illustrious parade of British dignitaries that included his aunt, Lady Randolph (Jennie) Churchill — the New York-born mother of Britain’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, and Leslie’s cousin, Winston Churchill — and the…
69 Love Songs: L.D Beghtol talks Magnetic Fields & Three Terrors
It’s hard to believe, but this interview is now some 25 years old. It was given by Beghtol from his office in Manhattan, and published just a month before 9/11. It was after that, that the world changed forever. For the many who have probably forgotten, Beghtol provided several of the standout ‘turns’ on The…
The Barbara Lopukhin Kidnap Plot
Little more than a year after the Russian Free Library’s Alexei Teplov found himself dodging spies in Hastings, the seaside resort and its neighbour Bexhill on Sea, would feature in a more sinister tale of counter-espionage, when the daughter of the former Director of the Department of Police (Fontanka) in St Petersburg and Kishinev, Aleksey…
A Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing — The Truth About The Manchester Arena Bombing
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…
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…
Will and Ariel Durant — Civilisation is not going to pieces
As a result of their two major triumphs, The Story of Philosophy and The Story of Civilization, Will and Ariel Durant became two of the most influential public intellectuals of the mid-20th century, the pair embarking on a forty-year mission to democratise high culture for the masses. Will once famously declared that “a great civilization…
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…