Category Archives: Journalism
PARK PEOPLE – Jimmy Burns interviews Jean Barker, Baroness Trumpington
Published in Friends of Battersea Park Review January 2010 Told by a mutual friend to expect “ a very lovely personality”, I approached my first ever interview with Lady Trumpington with a huge sense of anticipation , somewhat overawed with the task of engaging with one of the most formidable personalities living in Battersea. Consider this skeleton CV: One of Lloyd George’s landgirls before serving in naval intelligence at the WW2 codebreaking Bletchley Park, a one-time councillor and Mayor of Cambridge, a minister of state and now , aged 87 …
Secrets of Salamanca By Jimmy Burns
Published by The Financial Times: November 20 2009 Madrid has always exercised a curious hold on me. I blame it on the fact that I was born there, only to be whisked off by my Anglo-Spanish parents to England. I have spent more than a half a century making up for my early displacement from the Spanish capital by returning to it as often as possible. Recently, research for a book about my late father’s espionage activities there in the second world war has given me the perfect excuse to …
THE DEFENCE OF THE REALM by Christopher Andrew
Allen Lane) 1031 pages (£30.00) Review for The Tablet submitted 16/11/2010 I approached this authorised history of the British secret service MI5 with a degree of scepticism. Is one dealing here with history researched by an independent historian or an apologia for a government organisation whose hundred years of existence has drawn its lifeblood from secrecy and varying economies of truth? Christopher Andrew is a refreshingly unstuffy professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Cambridge, whose insights into the complex world of espionage and ability to convey them in comprehensible …
Chasing Diego – again by Jimmy Burns
An abridged version of this article appeared in the Dutch magazine Hard Gras in April 2010 Buenos Aires, January 2010, the start of World Cup Year. Superficially Maradona is a man transformed, his latest act of irresponsible behaviour-a foul-mouthed rant against some journalists when Argentina quialified- led to a dip in his poll ratings but is turning into a mere blip on a road to redemption in his role as coach of the national team. In the final preparatory stage for the Cup, Argentina beat Germany in a friendly! His …
Feature Article THE TABLET
Latest issue: 6 March 2010 Is the sun setting on the Spanish Church? Catholicism in Spain Jimmy Burns It was announced this week that the Pope will visit Spain in November. The news comes during a tense phase in Church-State relations after the Spanish Senate approved a new abortion law on 25 February. It is the latest round in a battle that the secularising government seems to be winning Last year an estimated one million people demonstrated in Madrid when the proposals to liberalise the abortion law became public. Now …
Jimmy Burns interviews actress Katie Darling
Published in Friends of Battersea Park review April 2010 Katie Darling swoops into Il Molino bang on the appointed time of 2.45 pm, dressed in a stunning scarlet red trouser suit and boots. Ordering her umpteenth coffee of the day in a loud clear voice, she settles down easily to conversation, clearly warming to the relaxed atmosphere of Battersea’s a la mode cafe, a popular gathering place for people with time on their hands and tales to tell. Together with her husband, three children, and two dogs-the not so young Pluto (White Labrador) and …
Diplomats to the core – how Oxford continues to ‘inoculate the world with Balliol’.
5 July 1997 It is 6pm and a group of young men and women are filing in orderly fashion into one of Oxford’s more discreet academic buildings for a lecture on the global politics of environment by a former UK ambassador to the UN. Well groomed, well dressed, and soft spoken, these students from around the world cut a very different image to those who have been crowding into the university’s most popular pub, The King’s Arms, to celebrate the end of their finals. For these are no ordinary students. …
Counter-terrorism spy to take over as MI5 director-general
Published: March 8 2007 02:00 A career spy with a track-record in international -counter-terrorism is to take over as the new head of MI5, the Home Office announced yesterday. Jonathan Evans, the security service’s deputy director-general, will next month succeed Dame Manningham-Buller who announced in December that she was retiring after serving four-and-half years. Mr Evans, aged 49, joined MI5 in 1980, working on counter-espionage operations during the last stages of the cold war. In the late 1980s and the 1990s, he worked as a senior MI5 officer in Irish-related …
Life with Captain Bob
MAXWELL’S FALL By Roy Greenslade Simon & Schuster Pounds 4.99 Among the least edifying spectacles of the aftermath of Mr Robert Maxwell’s death was the speed of the overnight conversion of his flagship newspaper, the Daily Mirror, from docile servant to exposer of the publisher’s many sins. The newspaper that had proclaimed Mr Maxwell a ‘giant with wisdom’ was to go out of its way to condemn him as a devil. The Mirror’s exposes ranged from stories of widespread buggings of senior executives to mock-up photographs of Mr Maxwell with …
Superstar for the Nineties
Published: 30 November 1996 The musical Jesus Christ Superstar, first performed 26 years ago, is being revived on the London stage. It provoked cries of blasphemy when it first appeared. An author and journalist who was inspired by it then went to see the new version. I was 17 turning 18 when, back in 1970, the portrayal of Jesus Christ as a rock star first stirred my imagination and fuelled my enthusiasm in a way countless catechism lessons, sermons, and picture-book lives of saints had not done during my childhood. …
