BOOK REVIEW / Paperbacks: The Unlikely Spy by Paul Henderson, Bloomsbury pounds 6.99

You can be sure this title was high on Lord Justice Scott's 1993 Books of the Year list. Not that it has pretensions to a literary award, but the insights offered by the ex-M D of Matrix Churchill into British intelligence and the arms trade are of central interest to the Scott Inquiry. Henderson was one of the businessmen working with Iraq who also provided, at great personal risk, military intelligence for MI6. In exchange export licences were handed out. No sane person now doubts that the Thatcher government armed and supported Saddam's vicious regime. Just why they did so is the question which remains.