In his bestselling book “Archangel”, Robert Harris creates an entire modern political thriller around Stalin’s great secret — which is revealed only in the second half of the book. And that incredible secret turns out…

I’ve just come back from a week-long holiday in the Channel Islands, spending time on both Guernsey and Sark. In addition to the rural quiet, spectacular scenery and delicious local food, one attraction for me…

Alan Furst is routinely hailed as possibly the greatest living writer of traditional espionage fiction. He sets his books in exotic times and places — this one, for example, recounts stories of the French resistance…

If you had asked me a week ago what I thought of this book, I’d have answered — “It’s much more readable than Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. That’s not what I think now. Writing…

For some time now I have been a student of the decades long secret war between Russian revolutionaries and the tsarist police. (Attentive readers of this website will be aware that my research culminated a…