In the 1960’s there was a thriller called The President’s Plane is Missing by Robert J. Serling, the older brother of Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame. As I remember it, the book wasn’t bad….

My article about the rebellion of Georgian soldiers on the Dutch island of Texel in April-May 1945 — often described as the final battle of the second world war in Europe — has appeared in…

A German couple recently went on holiday in the Austrian Alps, and found a four-star hotel in the village of Gerlos.  To their shock, in the lobby were two framed photographs of men in World…

This was a surprising book. I expected an account of the numerous small-scale attempts by individuals and tiny groups of decent Germans to oppose the Nazi regime, such as the famous White Rose group. Instead,…

‘Joe’ in this case is slang for a secret agent. This book, the sixth and latest (but not last) of the series is set in Slough House, the place where the British secret service discards…

OK, I’ve said this before and I have to say it again: plot is not Mick Herron’s greatest strength. In this book, the fifth in the Slough House series, a bunch of terrorists blow up…

On October 30, 1972 a little-known author named Arthur Tobier published a book entitled How McGovern Won the Presidency and Why the Polls Were Wrong. The New York Times described the book as “perhaps premature”. A…