Between the diplomatic dance and the infernal destruction of war is to be found the opaque art of espionage. Two recent novels dissect the art of espionage with a knowing eye and a clinical precision. …
Articles by: "Stephen Loosley"
Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now is highly regarded as a cinematic masterpiece but is, of course, much more in its impact and continuing resonance. The film is emblematic of the Vietnam War, with …
The only time I had ever seen La Moneda (‘the Mint’)—the presidential palace in Santiago, Chile—was in a newsreel showing the Hawker Hunter aircraft of the Chilean Air Force bombing that magnificent edifice during the …
At first thought, the Whitlam Institute on the campus of Western Sydney University is an odd place to have an exhibition supported by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and dedicated to espionage in Australia. After …
It was John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s first vice president, who characterised his office most pithily and dismissively. The formidable Texas Democrat, ‘cactus Jack’, declared that the vice presidency of the United States was ‘not …
Peter Jackson’s film on the centenary of the Great War, They Shall Not Grow Old, is a masterpiece. Jackson has brought the hostilities of the Western Front of 1914–1918 to vivid life in a brilliantly …
In the wake of the congressional midterms, the United States remains divided electorally and the primary issue continues to be President Donald Trump. American differences are now clearly in evidence in Congress, with Democrats having …
Ronen Bergman has written an extraordinary book which is at once morally confronting and gripping in its narrative. Without the formal assistance of Israel’s intelligence community, including Mossad, Bergman has produced a comprehensive account of …
The new cold war is being fought in cyberspace on a continuing basis and with ever more sophisticated technologies. The Western powers, principally the United States and its allies, confront growing intrusions from adversaries ranging …
This is a superb book. John Lewis Gaddis is a distinguished academic at Yale University, occupying the Robert A. Lovett Professorship of History. He’s a strategic thinker of the first order, having won the Pulitzer …
Sydney’s Daily Telegraph left no one in any doubt as to its view of the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin on 5 March 1953. ‘Stalin Dead – Hooray!’ ran the headline on Frank Packer’s tabloid. This …
The dramatic Allied failure in the Norway campaign of April 1940 destroyed Neville Chamberlain as British PM and, ironically, elevated the fiasco’s architect, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Spencer Churchill, to wartime leadership. …