I read best-selling author Griffiths’ latest novel, which involved time travel, and in the end I wasn’t impressed. But I have friends who are really hooked on her crime fiction starring Dr Ruth Galloway, an…
Elly Griffiths is the author of two very successful series of novels, knocking off dozens of titles. She apparently has a huge fanbase. This book promises the be the first of a series featuring Ali…
“Both history and psychoanalysis are sciences of memory, both are professionally committed to skepticism, both trace causes in the past, both seek to penetrate behind pioues professions and subtle evasions.” So concludes historian Peter Gay…
This attractive, well-illustrated short biography of Stalin is part of a new series featuring prominent historians including Max Hastings and focussing on some of the biggest issues, including the Third Reich, the British Empire and…
This is not the first time I have read this short book and that’s probably because it is proving to be so useful to me in my understanding of how the tsarist police (the Okhrana)…
This is a surprisingly interesting book. In just 143 pages (including extensive footnotes), the author examines many aspects of the Soviet dictator’s life through the prism of Freudian psychoanalysis. And many of his conclusions are…
No, he didn’t. The author of this short book, a former Bolshevik, apparently met Stalin briefly before the 1917 revolution, and says that the man didn’t make much of an impression. The remaining 90% of…
This is how history books used to look: no index, no footnotes, no bibliography. Life for historians was easier in 1940. Eugene Lyons, a journalist, was the first Western newspaperman to interview Josef Stalin in…
Dr Michael Mosley, who sadly died last year, was one of the great communicators about science and medicine. His radio shows and podcasts taught millions of us about things we could do to improve our…
If you’re looking for a book about Grateful Dead fans, this is not it. But if you want to continue following the increasingly strange adventures of the female serial killer Rhiannon Lewis, this is book…