The Green Ribbon Books

Defending the Realm: MI5 and the Shayler Affair

Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding
Andre Deutsch
1999

In 1997, MI5 officer David Shayler went public with a series of damning criticisms of the Security Service. With this book, Hollingsworth and Fielding took Shayler's story as the starting point for a survey of the organisation as a whole.

At the time, Shayler's primary grievance was with what he saw as MI5 incompetence, and the two journalists were particularly impressed by his refusal to indulge in wild conspiracy theories, or to reveal details of  ongoing operations' or agents' identities.

His more recent bizarre behaviour is obvious ammunition for his critics, but arguably only enhances the importance of this book as an exposition of his original views.

Blair

Anthony Seldon
The Free Press
2004

(review originally published in the Irish World, 2 July 2004)

A new biography of Tony Blair arrived on my desk last week, and it’s a weighty tome in every sense.

The author, Anthony Seldon, is one of Britain’s top political historians, and has collaborated at one time or another with most of the other people who could lay claim to that title.

The book, entitled simply Blair, consists of 20 chapters on key events in the Prime Minister’s life, alternating with 20 chapters on key individuals.