I was living in England when post #134 of my #bookcovers and #firstsentence homage on #Instagram, #Spycatcher by #PeterWright, was published in 1987. And I recall the Thatcher government's ban on its sale in the UK and strident their attempts to do likewise in Australia, with Wright's publishers defended by a brash young #MalcolmTurnbull.

Turnbull won the case in Australia, and the Law Lords overturned the UK ban in 1988. Sometime after that, I bought my secondhand copy of Spycatcher for £1.50. And although I'm no expert on the spy business, after reading it, I couldn't understand the fuss over the book, other than further embarrassing the UK spy agencies over George Blake and the Cambridge Five!

As for Wright's opening sentences, I could imagine James Bond's Daniel Craig speaking them:

For years I had wondered what the last day would be like. In January 1976 after two decades in the top echelons of the British Security Service, MI5, it was time to rejoin the real world.

TallAndTrueBooks post on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpWHbpYFGOw/

@lydiaconwell

That is some a-grade bullshit and didn't someone called Orwell write something about thought crime??

The way that Corbyn was ousted by the Blairites in Labour was so efficient that it feels very MI5/CIA to me in a Spycatcher-kind of way.

https://labourbriefing.org/blog/2021/5/18/how-the-ehrc-got-it-so-wrong

#CIAPoliticalIntervention #MI5 #Spycatcher

German prosecutors say an employee of Germany’s foreign intelligence service has been arrested on suspicion of treason for allegedly passing information to Russia https://abcn.ws/3POjR3M
#Ukraine #Germany #Russia #SpyCatcher #BreakingNews