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Professor James Smith's Outputs (12)

John le Carré's The Looking Glass War: Imagining the Special Operations Executive – Secret Intelligence Service Rivalry as Post-war Counterfactual History (2022)
Journal Article
Smith, J. (2023). John le Carré's The Looking Glass War: Imagining the Special Operations Executive – Secret Intelligence Service Rivalry as Post-war Counterfactual History. Intelligence and National Security, 38(2), 218-231. https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2022.2151756

Published in 1965, John le Carré’s The Looking Glass War was met with little of the acclaim given to its predecessor, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. In this article, I propose an alternative reading of the novel, suggesting that it is embroiled i... Read More about John le Carré's The Looking Glass War: Imagining the Special Operations Executive – Secret Intelligence Service Rivalry as Post-war Counterfactual History.

'Has left wing tendencies but might be used with caution': J. B. Priestley and the British Secret State (2016)
Journal Article
Smith, J. (in press). 'Has left wing tendencies but might be used with caution': J. B. Priestley and the British Secret State. Journal of the J.B. Priestley Society,

It is no secret that J. B. Priestley often attracted public controversy for his radical political views. A man of the left, he proudly described himself as being 'pink, and a pleasant healthy colour it is too'.1 Consequently, across his life he lent... Read More about 'Has left wing tendencies but might be used with caution': J. B. Priestley and the British Secret State.

“How Safe Do You Feel?”: James Bond, Skyfall and the Politics of the Secret Agent in an Age of Ubiquitous Threat (2016)
Journal Article
Smith, J. (2016). “How Safe Do You Feel?”: James Bond, Skyfall and the Politics of the Secret Agent in an Age of Ubiquitous Threat. College literature, 43(1), 145-172. https://doi.org/10.1353/lit.2016.0010

When examining the process of the banalization of warfare, the history of the modern state intelligence apparatus provides one of the most significant examples of such a transition. This article, through analysis of the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall,... Read More about “How Safe Do You Feel?”: James Bond, Skyfall and the Politics of the Secret Agent in an Age of Ubiquitous Threat.

The MacDonald Discussion Group: A Communist Conspiracy in Britain’s Cold War Film and Theatre Industry—Or MI5’s Honey-Pot? (2015)
Journal Article
Smith, J. (2015). The MacDonald Discussion Group: A Communist Conspiracy in Britain’s Cold War Film and Theatre Industry—Or MI5’s Honey-Pot?. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 35(3), 454-472. https://doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2015.1049862

During the cold war, the British entertainment industry escaped the extent of the anti-communist sentiments that gripped America, but recently released files from MI5 (Britain’s domestic security-intelligence agency) indicate that British intelligenc... Read More about The MacDonald Discussion Group: A Communist Conspiracy in Britain’s Cold War Film and Theatre Industry—Or MI5’s Honey-Pot?.

Ezra Pound, James Strachey Barnes (`The Italian Lord Haw-Haw’) and Italian Fascism (2013)
Journal Article
Bradshaw, D., & Smith, J. (2013). Ezra Pound, James Strachey Barnes (`The Italian Lord Haw-Haw’) and Italian Fascism. The Review of English Studies, 64(266), 672-693. https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgt016

This article sheds new light on Ezra Pound’s activities in wartime Italy through the lens of his friendship and collaboration with James Strachey Barnes. Barnes emerged in the mid-1920s as one of the most fervent British apologists of Fascism and he... Read More about Ezra Pound, James Strachey Barnes (`The Italian Lord Haw-Haw’) and Italian Fascism.