Spying

Could anyone be trusted in Tudor and Stuart England?

13 July 2024 9:00 am

An investigation of the codes, disguises and invisible inks used by plotters and spymasters captures the paranoia of an age when secret messages could be hidden anywhere

The Xi files: how China spies

27 April 2024 9:00 am

Most states spy. In principle there’s nothing to stop them. But China’s demand for intelligence on the rest of the…

The spycop debacle is another nail in the Met’s coffin

9 April 2022 9:00 am

In 2010, Mark Kennedy, a tattooed social justice warrior, was exposed as an undercover police officer. In this guise he…

Should locals be allowed to work at British embassies?

12 August 2021 7:40 pm

It is just short of 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union and suddenly there comes a reminder…

We need to act now to block Britain’s social credit system

25 July 2021 11:47 am

I have to admit that I didn’t quite get it right when, 12 days ago, I wrote: ‘There is a…

Matt Hancock isn't the only politician who is clueless about cyber security

7 July 2021 2:14 am

It is widely acknowledged that Britain has some of the world’s finest cyber capabilities. GCHQ is a global leader in…

Why is Macron feigning outrage at the Danish spying scandal?

5 June 2021 4:00 pm

The feigned outrage in Berlin – but mostly in Paris – at the USA’s proxy use of Denmark’s intelligence services…

How Denmark helped America spy on Sweden

1 June 2021 2:42 am

A large, investigative collaboration between Scandinavian public service outlets and European newspapers such as Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung has…

Why Roy Cohn is not one of the world’s most evil men

12 October 2019 9:00 am

New York   The Roy Cohn documentary Bully. Coward. Victim: the Story of Roy Cohn was successfully screened at the…

After Huawei, can we trust Chinese tech?

2 February 2019 9:00 am

The world is a better place for China’s emergence from behind the bamboo curtain where it hid for half a…

The assassination attempt on Napoleon, in the Rue Saint-Nicaise, Christmas Eve 1800

The history of Britain’s secret war on Napoleon is astonishing, inspiring and disturbing

22 September 2018 9:00 am

Laws and sausages, we know, are better not seen in the making; and neither are ‘black ops’. Waterloo may have…

Author Kate Atkinson attending the Costa Book Awards for her novel Life After Life

Kate Atkinson’s new novel Transcription asks us how carefully we are paying attention

22 September 2018 9:00 am

Transcription, Kate Atkinson’s 11th novel, sees her returning to the detective fiction she honed in her series about Jackson Brodie,…

Be a spy like me, Charlotte Bingham’s father advises

3 March 2018 9:00 am

That there’s a direct correlation between sex and spying is probably Ian Fleming’s fault. Hard to think of Bond without…

Yes, let our spies spy – but not our bureaucrats

5 March 2016 9:00 am

One of the marks of a good Home Secretary is a healthy wariness of those in authority who come begging…

Spies in the spotlight

7 November 2015 9:00 am

Spying is a branch of philosophy, although you would never guess it from that expression on Daniel Craig’s face. Its…

Julian Mitchell with Rob Callender rehearsing ‘Another Country’

Julian Mitchell on Another Country: ‘I based it on my fury and anger and I wrote it fast and it flowed'

22 March 2014 9:00 am

Robert Gore-Langton talks to Julian Mitchell about the painful roots of his hit play Another Country