First of all, that’s quite a title. In polite company, one doesn’t throw around the word ‘traitor’ very casually. But Lownie has written about traitors before (I really enjoyed his book about Guy Burgess) and…
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Do books come any scarier than this? I guess they do. The Exorcist was pretty terrifying. But Ira Levin’s great skill as a story-teller reveals itself here in creating a world that is both unimaginably…
Having recently read a new novel about the creation of a Nazi Fourth Reich set in 2012, I wanted to return to this classic thriller. I noticed two things immediately: first of all, the prospects…
Imagine if you will a wealthy German-American whose son runs as a populist candidate for the Republican nomination for president — but who harbours a dark secret. That secret is not his inclination towards fascism…
Military coups are, sadly, a fairly regular occurrence in Africa. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen the military seizing or attempting to seize power in Mali, Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon and Sudan. What makes…
During the years between writing Animal Farm and 1984, George Orwell was mostly engaged with journalism. In early 1945, he was sent over to the continent to observe the final weeks of the Second World…
Like many people, I grew up thinking that the West had the best secret agents — James Bond being the most famous (fictional) example. It was only later on that I discovered the incredible successes…
It seems like everyone who reads this books loves it, and the praise from book reviewers is deafening. Allow me to offer a dissenting view. While the life story of the author is tragic and…
Last week, a youth worker in the UK named Hannah Wilkinson tweeted an image from a textbook used today in this country for A-Level history. Students were asked “To what extent do you believe the…
Silverview, John le Carré’s final book, has all the elements that made his earlier books such fantastic reads. It has former spies, current spies, hard-nosed cynics, naive innocents, betrayed husbands, faithless wives, several plot strands…