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…

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…

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…

Journalist and author Paul Mason turns to the past to see what worked — and what didn’t work — in the fight against fascism in the twentieth century. He confronts head-on the staggering failure of…

Oliver Burkeman is a recovering “personal productivity” addict. I feel his pain. He’s a writer who knows his Pomodoro Method, his GTD, even his ‘First Things First”. And after years of writing about all the…

This book, the third in a series featuring the fictional detective Daniel Hawthorne, a Sherlockian consulting detective if there ever was one, and his very own Dr. Watson — Anthony Horowitz himself. It’s an amusing…

Every year in June, representatives of the world’s governments, employers and workers come together for the International Labour Conference in Geneva. This has been happening more or less since the founding of the International Labour…

I really liked The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins’ first best-selling thriller, and approached this book with caution. One should always be prepared for disappointment following blockbuster books and their Hollywood adaptations. But I…