Insight (Sunday Times)

Last updated

Insight is the investigative team of the British newspaper The Sunday Times . The project was begun by Clive Irving in 1963. An early investigation was into the Profumo affair. [1] Insight is known for revealing in 1967 that the defector to Russia, Kim Philby, was the third man in the Cambridge Spy ring; [2] for investigating the thalidomide controversy; [3] and for revealing the secret manufacture of nuclear weapons by Israel. [4] In 2011, it exposed the FIFA cash for votes scandal.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Philby</span> British intelligence officer and Soviet double agent (1912–1988)

Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a British intelligence officer and a spy for the Soviet Union. In 1963, he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring that had divulged British secrets to the Soviets during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been the most successful in providing secret information to the Soviets.

<i>The Times</i> British daily newspaper

The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times, are published by Times Media, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times, which do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have had common ownership only since 1966. In general, the political position of The Times is considered to be centre-right.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Irving</span> British author and Holocaust denier

David John Cawdell Irving is an English author who has written on the military and political history of World War II, especially Nazi Germany. He was found to be a Holocaust denier in a UK court in 2000 as a result of a failed libel case.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cambridge Five</span> British ring of spies for the Soviet Union

The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the Cold War and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Evans (presenter)</span> English radio, TV presenter (born 1966)

Christopher James Evans is an English television presenter, radio DJ and producer for radio and television. He started his broadcasting career working for Piccadilly Radio, Manchester, as a teenager, before moving to London as a presenter for the BBC's BBC Radio London and then Channel 4 television, where The Big Breakfast made him a star. Soon he was able to dictate highly favourable terms, allowing him to broadcast on competing radio and TV stations. Slots like Radio 1 Breakfast and TFI Friday provided a mix of celebrity interviews, music and comic games, delivered in an irreverent style that attracted high ratings, though often also generated significant numbers of complaints. By 2000 he was the UK's highest paid entertainer, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. In the tax year to April 2017, he was the BBC's highest-paid presenter, earning between £2.2m and £2.25m annually.

<i>Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy</i> Spy novel by John le Carré

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 1974 spy novel by the author and former spy John le Carré. It follows the endeavours of the taciturn, ageing spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. The novel has received critical acclaim for its complex social commentary—and, at the time, relevance, following the defection of Kim Philby. It was followed by The Honourable Schoolboy in 1977 and Smiley's People in 1979. The three novels together make up the "Karla Trilogy", named after Smiley's long-time nemesis Karla, the head of Soviet foreign intelligence and the trilogy's overarching antagonist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harold Evans</span> British journalist and writer (1928–2020)

Sir Harold Matthew "Harry" Evans was a British-American journalist and writer. In his career in his native Britain, he was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981, and its sister title The Times for a year from 1981, before being forced out of the latter post by Rupert Murdoch. While at The Sunday Times, he led the newspaper's campaign to seek compensation for mothers who had taken the morning sickness drug thalidomide, which led to their children having severely deformed limbs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Green</span> British businessman (born 1952)

Sir Philip Nigel Ross Green is a British businessman who was the chairman of the retail company Arcadia Group. He owned the high street clothing retailers Topshop, Topman, and Miss Selfridge from 2002 to 2020. In May 2023, his net worth was estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List to be £910 million.

Clive Warren is a British radio presenter.

<i>The Sunday Times</i> British newspaper, founded 1821

The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as The New Observer. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, which is owned by News Corp(Founder: Rupert Murdoch). Times Newspapers also publishes The Times. The two papers, founded separately and independently, have been under the same ownership since 1966. They were bought by News International in 1981.

Phillip George Knightley was an Australian journalist, critic, and non-fiction author. He became a visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln, England, and was a media commentator on the intelligence services and propaganda.

<i>The Northern Echo</i> Newspaper

The Northern Echo is a regional daily morning newspaper based in the town of Darlington in North East England, serving mainly southern County Durham and northern Yorkshire. The paper covers national as well as regional news. In 2007, its then-editor claimed that it was one of the most famous provincial newspapers in the United Kingdom. Its first edition was published on 1 January 1870.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Macintyre</span> British columnist and author

Benedict Richard Pierce Macintyre is a British author, reviewer and columnist for The Times newspaper. His columns range from current affairs to historical controversies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pete Thomas (saxophonist)</span> Musical artist

Pete Thomas is a British music producer, TV and film composer, recording musician, and saxophonist. He was born in London and is based in Southampton, England.

Rufina Ivanovna Pukhova was a Russian memoir writer. She was the last wife of Kim Philby, a KGB double agent who rose in rank through British Intelligence along with the Cambridge Five. She met Philby through George Blake. Pukhova and Philby married in 1971. She is the author of The Private Life of Kim Philby: The Moscow Years (2000). Pukhova was born in Moscow to a Russian father and a Polish mother.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luke Evans</span> Welsh actor and singer

Luke George Evans is a Welsh actor and singer. He began his career on the stage, and performed in London's West End productions of Rent, Miss Saigon, and Piaf before making his film breakthrough in the Clash of the Titans 2010 remake. Following his debut, Evans was cast in the action and thriller films Immortals (2011), The Raven (2012), and the re-imagined The Three Musketeers (2011).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murray Sayle</span>

Murray William Sayle was an Australian journalist, novelist and adventurer.

<i>Good Times, Bad Times</i> (book) 1983 book by Harold Evans

Good Times, Bad Times is a book, published in 1983, that details Harold Evans' editorship of The Sunday Times and his short-lived editorship of The Times. Written shortly after his departure from The Times, it is particularly critical of the newspaper's owner, Rupert Murdoch. The allegations contained within the book resulted in questions being asked in Parliament. Critics regarded the book as well-written but partisan and were divided as to how convincing they found the arguments it contained. The book was re-issued in 2011 with an updated preface in the wake of the News International phone hacking scandal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Władysław Sikorski's death controversy</span> Conspiracy theories

Władysław Sikorski's death controversy revolves around the death of the commander-in-chief of the Polish Army and Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile, General Władysław Sikorski, in the 1943 B-24 crash in Gibraltar. Sikorski's Liberator II crashed off Gibraltar almost immediately after takeoff, with the plane's pilot being the only survivor. The catastrophe, while officially classified as an accident, has led to several conspiracy theories that persist to this day, and often propose that the crash was an assassination, which has variously been blamed as a German, Soviet, British and even Polish conspiracy. The incident is still described by some historians as mysterious and was investigated by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. They concluded that the injuries sustained were consistent with a plane crash and that there was not enough evidence to support or reject the theory that the plane was deliberately sabotaged.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Sissmore</span> British MI5 and SIS officer

Kathleen Maria Margaret Sissmore, MBE (1898–1982), was known as Jane Sissmore and then Jane Archer after her marriage in 1939. In 1929 she became the first female officer in Britain's Security Service, MI5, and was still their only woman officer at the time of her dismissal for insubordination in 1940. She had been responsible for investigations into Soviet intelligence and subversion. She then joined the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), but when Kim Philby, later to be exposed as a double agent, became her boss he reduced her investigative work because he feared she might uncover his treachery.

References

  1. Irving, Clive (24 September 2020). "Harry Evans: The Editor Who Wouldn't Be Gagged Paved the Way for a Golden Age of Journalism". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  2. Evans, Harold (20 September 2009). "The Sunday Times and Kim Philby". The Sunday Times . London. Archived from the original on 15 June 2011.
  3. Davies, Nick (7 February 2008). Flat Earth News. London: Chatto & Windus. pp. 287–328. ISBN   978-0-7011-8145-1.
  4. "Mordechai Vanunu: The Sunday Times articles". The Sunday Times. London. 21 April 2004. Archived from the original on 5 September 2008. Retrieved 2 April 2010.