Ghost Writer by Polanski review by Gilad Atzmon

[David Guyatt]

That's right, I forgot it was his wife, even though I skipped to the end (no spoiler alert because the quality of the work doesn't really require it). Someone else told me Gordon Brown was the real CIA agent, but I never looked into it. I just extracted Sikorski's book from the moving box and the first paragraph in the prologue is interesting:

On the fourth of June, 1989, the day of Poland's first partly democratic election since the Second World War, I was deep in the Angolan bush, not far from the strategic Benguela railway. I had joined a unit of Jonas Savimbi's UNITA guerillas on a long trek from his base at Jamba to the battleground in the central highlands. They had been fighting a Cuban-supported Communist government in Luanda since the 1970s and I admired them. Later, Savimbi's personality cult, the dishonesty of my minders, and the atmosphere of voodoo superstition were to change my mind.

Very Heart of Darkness there. What's Sikorski's connexion with British intelligence, if any? Is this the same person who is Trusk's foreign minister?

I can't think of any other reason Polanski would be arrested at the time he was unless it was some horse trading involving US interests, UBS and bailouts, but that seems even less likely.

There was an interesting essay in LOBSTER several years ago that showed that Blair, Brown and Mo Mowlem were all members of an American think-tank, or similar (can't recall its name just now), and as I remember it the essay suggested all three were captured assets of US interests. Does this mean CIA? Perhaps. But they were, it seems, working for the interests of a foreign power, not their own country.

Of course, this "betrayal" argument has little legs because it is commonplace for leading lights in Blighty to hold Uncle's coat-tails. Years ago Fred Holroyd told me that it was not at all unusual or even remarkable for the CIA station people to openly recruit officers from the British Army Intelligence Corps.