BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - NON-FICTION

The Great Crash of 1929 (1954) John Kenneth Galbraith   Who Runs Britain: And Who's to Blame for the Economic Mess We are In (2008) Robert Peston   J. K. Galbraith produced his short book on the Great Crash of 1929 in late 1954 in an atmosphere that still recalled recent witch hunts over communism (a fact that will help an early twenty-first century reader with some of his more obscure political references). The Penguin edition adds the short Foreword to the 1975 edition that urged 'memory' as a necessary corrective to over-enthusiasm within the financial system. One can only guess what this grand old man of liberal economics would have written in 2008 or, indeed, about the self-inflicted economic mess today (2023). Galbraith's book is not the last word on the subject of the causes and consequences of 1929 - how could it be: it was written over 50 years ago within only 25 years of the events in question and largely from contemporary newspaper reports and ava...

Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult (2008)   Richard B. Spence   Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics (2014) Marco Pasi I n Lobster , the premier journal of para-politics in the UK, I argued that more latitude should be given to historians when dealing with the shadowy world of espionage. I had an interest as someone initially trained as a historian, who had participated in a range of political projects and who often had had to deal with cases of political manipulation damaging the reputation of persons who were clients or friends of mine. The 'truth' about the grey world between official record and unrecorded action is generally handled in one of two ways. Professional historians will rely solely on the records available and refuse to speculate on what might be missing. This might mean that no lies are told but it might also mean that interpretations of events are incomplete or that we see historians unwittingly writ...