Customer Reviews:
 "Princeton is a pseudo-Gothic Cotswold..." October 31, 2006
If you've ever been to Princeton University, NJ and the Cotswold you'll realize how funny this quote from the book is. Besides interesting tid-bits like this, a more serious allegation by Peter Wright was that the Cuban Missile Crisis was a "set-up," a fabulous Russian disinformation effort in which the Russians actually won! Having lived through this incident I'm firmly convinced that he was right. You'll have to read about it to find out why.
Overall, the book is one of the most interesting spy books I've ever read. It's basic, down-to-earth and showed MI-5 to be a disaster mainly as a result of activities by a few elite, upper-crust, rich, idealistic Oxford/Cambridge (Oxbridge)University homosexuals! All this started in the 1930's and moved into the 50's. What a mess!
It also displays the courage of several men, mainly Peter Wright, to find the truth and act on it. Peter's boss, the head of MI-5, was a spy for Russia, but Peter was relentless in his effort to expose this fact.
If you like spy books you have got to get this one.
 Inside the British Secret Service July 10, 2002
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Peter Wright was a former assistant director of MI5 (Britain's secret service or counter-intelligence). This is his story of his career, including his anecdotes about his American allies. He joined MI5 as a scientist who specialized in tools for espionage. He had been promised credit for his years as a civilian scientist. When this promise was broken at retirement, he wrote this book to even out things.This is an interesting book that can't be summarized in a few paragraphs. It is definitely worth reading for the details on government activities in a "democracy". Watergate was a notable failure of such activities. Do these activities continue? Of course! Pages 158-9 tell of his proposal for a "Bolshevik model" for former colonial countries: let a political party control the army and secret police so that neither the army or another political party could gain control of the government. He pointed out that only those newly created countries that adopted this principle have escaped military dictatorships and civil war. Does the above advice seem to cynical and radical? But our Establishment DOES control the army and secret police so that neither the military or a populist political party (one not controlled by corporate interests) can gain control. Yet the classic solution for democracies, from Aristotle to Machiavelli to our Founding Fathers was well-armed citizens and their militia. It has worked well for over over a century, and the idea still survives today.
PETER WRIGHT IS DEAD! January 30, 2002
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Well, the Peter Wright who wrote SPYCATCHER is a deceased person. Your side-bar link to, "...an interview with Peter Wright," leads to an interview with a live Peter Wright, not the dead Peter Wright. Right?
(not a review - please read carefully) April 5, 1999
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
this is not a review, but a note to amazon.comfor "spycatcher" by peter wright, you have on the same screen an interview with peter wright. unfortunately for you, Peter Wright-who=wrote-spycatcher DIED a few years ago. He is an ex-spycatcher (cue dead parrot sketch). So please REMOVE your "interview-with-DIFFERENT-PeterWright" link from the spycatcher book page. I hope this note is sufficiently clear, if not, email me at bg283@ncf.ca thanks, bts And by the way, I would very much like to write a review of "spycatcher", it is an excellent book, but please take the "interview" link out of the page for this book.... thanks, bts
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