: Stuart Christie reviews The World That Never Was

"The main story, however, is of the penetration of these groups of often naive utopians by the sinister functionaries of the secret state whose job it was to protect the status quo: the policemen and spymasters who lurked in the shadows seeding uncertainty and dissent, cultivating tensions, beguiling with deceits, and luring credulous and impressionable idealists into committing crimes they may never have otherwise conceived."

OK, hold your nose, minimise your browser so you don't have to look at the ads, and enjoy this fine review...and here's my fave bit:

"For years the Metropolitan Police Special Branch fought tenaciously to prevent access to their files for the 1890s, the period of Melville's ascendancy. When Butterworth asked initially for them under a Freedom of Information application, he was told the files had been lost, pulped in the war effort, or destroyed by a bomb. Then, in 2001, they mysteriously reappeared, having been used as the basis for a doctoral thesis by a serving Special Branch officer"