The Green Ribbon Books

The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence

Richard J. Aldrich
John Murray (Publishers) Ltd.
2001

The crucial role of intelligence to the Anglo-American special relationship has long been recognised. In this book, historian Richard Aldrich provides a profound new insight into the nature of that relationship in the first two decades of the cold war.

Intelligence liaison has often been portrayed as a polite variation of espionage, and Aldrich shows the extent this was true even between these closest of allies.

At the start of the cold war both states considered covert action to undermine the Eastern bloc. However, their interests diverged after the first Soviet atom bomb tests in 1949.

Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: US Covert Action & Counterintelligence

Roy Godson
National Strategy Information Center 1995
Transaction Publishers 2001

Roy Godson may be a Georgetown University Professor, but his knowledge of the intelligence world is clearly more than academic.He was himself implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal, an episode that informs the analysis in this book.

Godson divides intelligence into four main elements, collection, analysis, covert action and counter-intelligence. The latter two areas, arguably the murkiest of all, form his subject matter. Each has two sections devoted to it, one considering the history of the discipline since 1945, and another setting out its basic principles.

Covert action is essentially the art of clandestine political intervention in the affairs of other states. (It's worth noting that the author's father, Joe Godson, has been accused of covert intevention in British politics during his time as Labour attache in London in the 1950s.)

My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy

Kim Philby
1968

The autobiography of the KGB's top spy in MI6.

Harold Adrian Russell Philby was born in 1912, the son of Harry St John Philby, an officer of the Indian Civil Service who was closely involved in the rise of the House of Saud in Arabia.

Philby's lifelong nickname 'Kim' would prove to be singularly appropriate. Like Kipling's hero, he was a key player in the great game being played out between Britain and Russia. The crucial difference was that Philby was playing for the Russian side.

Ths book is own account of his role, written in Moscow after his final defection to the Soviet Union.

In the Public Interest: A devastating account of the Thatcher Government's involvement in the covert arms trade

Gerald James
Little, Brown and Company
1995

I briefly met Gerald James once at a meeting of MOJO, the group organised by former Birmingham Six member Paddy Hill. It was an incongruous setting in which to come across a former paratrooper and successful city accountant, but James had a fascinating tale to tell, the bones of the story which is told more fully in this book.

As a former member of the Monday Club, and friend of MI6's George Kennedy Young, James was by his own admission part of the Tory clique that brought Thatcher to power, the very group that would bring down his company ten years later. "On the face of it," he writes, "this is the great irony of my story."

To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland

Sean O'Callaghan
Brandon
2001

To Hell or Barbados describes the fate of the thousands of Irish sold into slavery in the West Indies and Virginia after Cromwell's invasion in the Seventeenth Century.

The book illustrates the links between Cromwell's policies in England, the invasion of Ireland and the 'Western design' in the Caribbean. Irish rebels and English dissidents were sold into slavery along with millions of Africans.

It conveys a strong impression of an era whose legacy is still with us today. That is partly down to the power of O'Callaghan's description of the colonial West Indies. It is a vivid, not to say lurid account, of a society of exploitation and cruel debauchery maintained by systematic violence.

This is a powerful book, well worth reading for anyone interested in Caribbean, American, Irish or English history

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Paine: Political Writings

Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
Thomas Paine, edited by Bruce Kuklick
Cambridge University Press
1989, 2Rev Ed 2000

Tom Paine was arguably the most important thinker in the English radical tradition and a significant figure in both the French and American revolutions. He transformed the art of political writing with a lucid plain style designed to appeal to the common people rather than the classically educated elite.

This useful anthology includes a number of his most important writings:

Common Sense (1776) - tract containing the first open call for the Thirteen Colonies of America to throw off their allegiance to Britain. At one time there was one copy in circulation for every five people on America.

The Crisis Number I (1776) - Famous pamphlet written while Paine accompanied George Washington's army in its retreat across New Jersey. Washington had it read to his men before crossing the Delaware. Its power is exemplified by the famous opening lines: