Politics
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By David Burke. A memo has just been released from Britain’s National Archives. It concerns discussions at the apex of the British government about salacious rumours relating to John Hume’s private life. It was sent to Sir Robin Butler, Cabinet Secretary to John Major’s government, and also to Major’s private secretary, Sir Alex Allan. Allan […]
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By David Burke. George Blake has just died aged 98 at his dacha outside Moscow where Putin’s overseas intelligence service, the SVR, was protecting him from Covid-19. Blake was held in high esteem by the Russians. Putin has said that the “memory of this legendary person will be preserved forever in our hearts”. Putin awarded […]
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By Andrew Lownie. A few weeks ago the Irish Times ran an article on the death of Mountbatten linked to the new series of The Crown in which the murder features in the opening episode. As the author of the most recent biography ‘The Mountbattens: Their Lives and Loves’, I was interviewed for the piece on […]
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Tory PM Edward Heath concealed the identity of a paramilitary organisation which perpetrated a massacre in Belfast in 1971. He did so in the hope of acquiring the votes he needed to win a majority in the House of Commons to enable the UK to join the EEC, the forerunner of the EU. What he […]
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John le Carré spent most of his career exploring the British psyche through the lens of its secret service. You’d think he might have mentioned Ireland once or twice.
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As Covid-19 and other diseases spawn resistance to over-used antibiotics, phages – viruses that naturally infect and kill bacteria – may be a long-term replacement
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Opening UP
Poots shoots but the DUP is modernising and encountering dissent