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…
Last week, more than thirty masked young men broke into a public meeting at the human rights NGO “Memorial” in Moscow. They shouted “Scum!”, “Fascists!” “Get out of Russia!”, and “There’s no room for foreign…
Only recently, I learned that the title of this book — and a key part of the story — is based on real events. There really was a German Nazi spy who helped Rommel’s armies…
Of the three aggressor nations that made up the Axis during the Second World War, only one saw its population rise up and topple a dictatorship. While the populations of Germany and Japan remained largely…