Beyond Enkription - The Burlington Files

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I could go on and on but am not going to inflict any more of this on myself or anyone else. The non-existent editing and sloppy excuse for writing in this book are an embarrassment to the writer and an insult to the reader. If you are interested in Oleg Penkovsky, Oleg Gordievsky, John le Carré or Kim Philby you should have heard of Pemberton’s People in MI6 by now. Colonel Alan Pemberton CVO MBE knew all of them and features as a leading protagonist in Beyond Enkription in The Burlington Files series.

The book “Beyond Enkription” by Bill Fairclough is the first stand-alone fact-based espionage novel of six autobiographical tomes in The Burlington Files series. As the first book in the series, it provides a gripping introduction to the world of British intelligence and espionage. It is an intense electrifying spy thriller that had me perched on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. The twists and turns in the interwoven plots kept me guessing beyond the epilogue. The characters were wholesome, well-developed and intriguing. The author’s attention to detail added extra layers of authenticity to the narrative. If you’re an espionage cognoscente you’ll love this monumental book but just because you think you know it all don’t surf through the prologue: you may miss some disinformation. If you felt squeamish when watching Jaws, you may find the savagery of the opening chapter upsetting, but it soon passes.One of the proudest moments of her political career, Ramsay tells me, was being one of three front bench government ministers in the House of Lords who took the Scotland Act through. A Scottish parliament was something her contemporaries at Glasgow Uni used to talk about. “It wasn’t a question of being Scottish nationalists, because most of us were Labour, but we all wanted a Scottish parliament. Devolution was almost something you talked about as a name and you couldn’t really see it coming to pass. It was certainly something John Smith felt very strongly about, as we all did. Of course, once he was leader, we really thought we’d do it and the Labour party did adopt it as a policy and we managed to deliver it. Well, he didn’t live to see it, but never mind, we fulfilled it.” Apart from running Faire Sans Dire for over forty years, Bill has also worked as a bean counter in both practice and industry. During his career he has been a director and executive of several renowned international businesses (in the Barclays Bank Group, the Reuters Group and Citigroup). He’s trod on the tails of many fat cats and investigated and despatched some household name villains over the decades. Well, he thought so but no doubt the CIA would have different manacles for him. No matter what it would be a change and MI6 had told him to have a rest and both were proverbially speaking the same." I concur completely with Nancy Mills' comments. The style is execrable, peppered with English demotic terms and phrases. I lost faith with the narrative after reading a basic, simple, factual error early on. There was no such organisation as the Irish Independent Republic Army: the author should have written Provisional I.R.A., or Provos/Provies. This sort of carelessness (or ignorance) is intensified by the errors mentioned in David C. Ward's review.

But Ramsay’s 55th birthday arguably fell at the perfect time. It wasn’t to be a simple early retirement – her old friends from the Glasgow Uni days were gearing up to New Labour and working towards electoral success that would see them in power until 2010. Her old friend John Smith immediately asked her to join his team as a foreign policy advisor after winning the Labour leadership. After working in the leader’s office until Smith passed away in 1994, Tony Blair nominated Ramsay for the House of Lords, which she joined in 1996. She has held a number of roles in the House, including as a government whip, and acting as a junior minister for the Departments of Health, Scotland and the Foreign Office. Other essential key management features include a secure mechanism for replication. Any encryption product that does not provide a secure means of recovering/replicating keys is a catastrophe waiting to happen, and one that's unfortunately likely to manifest in a disaster recovery situation. Look for a solution that allows keys to be replicated when a quorum comprised of a pre-determined number of people authenticate themselves to the system. Leo tried to becalm himself but his gut kept churning even though his life wasn't on the line. Only his career was but Burlington's life would be. The British Isles have not been united since 1922. There is the small matter of Irish independence and the subsequent progression of the Irish Free State to the Irish Republic, outside the British Commonwealth and NATO, but now an enthusiastic member of the European Union recently abandoned by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I'm sorry: that last sentence could have been written by Bill Fairclough! I too am a failed writer. The transition into politics was also eased largely by the fact she was still friends with her contemporaries from student politics; people like John Smith, Donald Dewar, James Gordon and Teddy Taylor. Although at the time the Glasgow University Union (GUU) was still the ‘men’s union’ and the Queen Margaret Union the ‘women’s union’, they all came together every second Friday at the GUU for the parliamentary debate. “Nobody thought this was a special group, nobody thought this was going to be a Labour minister or a Labour that at the time. You just take them as your contemporaries and you don’t necessarily know that,” Ramsay reflects.Edward had not the benefit of hindsight as to what was about to ensue but he was no longer manacled by manipulation or so he thought to prevent him from dealing with it." Ramsay welcomed me to her flat to talk about what it was like being part of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and her involvement in the New Labour, as well as to reminisce on her time as a student at Glasgow with some of the figures who would go on to become big names through those years. From her endearing and gentle nature, urging me to take a biscuit from the selection she’d laid out on platters, it would be hard to guess this woman was once believed to be in the running for chief of MI6. Although her meticulousness in making sure my cup of tea was made to my liking might be indicative of the type of character that led to such a successful career.