A Cold War thriller: Book 1 in the Angus McKinnon series Buy now from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3XsWWNv   Pacy, exciting and worryingly prescient "A highly enjoyable, breathlessly fast-paced thriller that delves into the making of Nick Elliott’s ingenious hero,...

Four years ago I posted this story of the SIBONGA rescue: https://nickelliott.org/blog/in-search-of-a-better-life/ My own involvement in this case, as the ship’s agent in Hong Kong, left an indelible mark and I often wondered what happened to those “boat people” once...

In both Sea of Gold and particularly in Dark Ocean I wrote of Angus McKinnon's backstory: his childhood trauma in Hong Kong. Today is the 50th anniversary of that tragedy, described in grim and graphic detail here: The 50th anniversary of the 1972 Hong Kong rainstorm...

A spy swap in the Syrian desert, a pirate attack in the Sulu Sea, a devastating confrontation in the Balkans … Beirut 1963: Kim Philby defects to Moscow. As he boards his Soviet escape ship, a young ship’s officer passes him, unnoticed, on the quayside. Valdis Ozols...

Of all the dreadful stories that fill the news daily, the death of those thirty-nine young Vietnamese folk found in a trailer in the south of England recently, has stuck in my mind. Call them refugees, illegal immigrants, whatever, they were just seeking a better...