Would you recommend Vagi's Coinage and History of the Roman Empire?

Sorry, don't mean to rerail the thread......

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Yeah, @Pishpash, that just Might be a factor in the equation....

 

...I always hate it --always too late-- when I do that. And here I abetted you in your evil agenda. ...It was fun, though. (I had to Wiki the guy; way before my time.)

 

To kinda bring it back onto coins, I bought this book - a gedenkschrift rather than a festschrift as it was presented posthumously - a few years back:



and was interested to find the previous owner's bookplate:



An eminent numismatist (he had an article in the book) and also a brother of Anthony Blunt, one of the Cambridge Five along with Kim Philby.

I remember "Spy Catcher"'s release in the 1980s and the UK government's efforts to suppress it. I didn't pay much attention but many years later I read a very interesting article, I think in an IEEE publication, on "The Thing". This was a brilliant listening device which apparently was undetected (though in open view) in the US embassy in Moscow for about five and a half years. It was designed by Leon Theremin, better known for his musical instrument, and even after its discovery baffled Western Intelligence until the same Peter Wright figured out how it worked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

ATB,
Aidan.

 

Extremely interesting post and an amazing job to swing this back to coins!

Which I will probably ruin with my next comment but I just can't resist: Spycatcher is such an amazing read as the secrets of the "spy game" of the 50's and 60's are explained in great detail (from a former MI5/MI6 Assistant Director) - it is such a different world from our "cyber" situation today. I still recall (from reading the novel 30 years ago) when MI-5 wanted to tail a suspected Russian agent on a walk in London to see where he would end up... They'd have one agent tail him for 1 block then peel off, they'd wait until the next day and have another agent pick him up at that spot and tail for 1 block and peel off.. and keep repeating day after day. agent after agent, until they found his home base.
No "trackers", no cell phone alerts, no CCTV cameras... its like reading a Hitchcock script... you just know its raining the whole time and they're wearing trench coats in the fog... So great.

A tribute in Appreciation of Christopher Blunt ~ Numismatist
http://www.britnumsoc.org/publications/Digital BNJ/pdfs/1974_BNJ_42_4.pdf


And you can always grab a used copy of Spycatcher for $4.

 

I just ordered it

ATB,
Aidan.

 

The IEEE article: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6678486 ("Lev Termen's Great Seal bug analyzed")

- Broucheion