Isaac Don Levine had a remarkable track record of writing breakthrough books about the twentieth century, routinely missing the main point. His 1917 book on the Russian Revolution failed to mention Lenin and the Bolsheviks….
A little more than a century ago, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya left their two-room apartment at Spiegelgasse 14 in Zurich, never to return. They travelled to Russia through Germany at the…
I was talking the other day to a young man who was patiently explaining to me that to be “left” is to be “anti-Israel”. There was no difference at all in his mind. And he…
To mark my birthday, we invited several dozen friends to join us yesterday in watching the 1939 film classic “Ninotchka” starring Greta Garbo. We rented out a local cinema for the occasion. Here is what…
Richard Overy is a first-class historian and an excellent writer. He’s also an expert on the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Second World War, so this short book was full of promise. It lived…
If elected in November, Zohran Mamdani will be the third democratic socialist mayor of New York City in the last 35 years. His predecessors included David Dinkins, a member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC)…
The publication of a new Mark Billingham novel is always a cause for celebration and this one is no different. Well, it is different, actually. It marks the return of Billingham’s iconic London police detective…
Many people with only a passing famililarity with Russian history will have heard about the revolution of 1905 — and about the massacre of unarmed workers by the Tsar’s troops in January of that year….
Dan Gallin, the former general secretary of the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF) passed away at his home in Geneva at the end of last month at the age of 94. He was to me,…
From the very first page of this compelling book, you’re in the thick of it. James Bloodworth describes participating in a course to teach him how to pick up girls in London’s Leicester Square. That…