This month marks the 100th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Georgia in February 1921. This is significant today, and not only for Georgians and Russians. Back in 1921, Georgia was ruled by the…Read more…
100 years on, the Georgian experiment remains relevant
This month marks the 100th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Georgia in February 1921. This is significant today, and not only for Georgians and Russians. Back in 1921, Georgia was ruled by the…Read more…
Review: The Case for Keto: The Truth About Low-Carb, High-Fat Eating, by Gary Taubes
Nearly twenty years ago, science journalist Gary Taubes wrote an article for the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times reporting that some eminent scientists were beginning to re-think the…Read more…
Kennedy, not Johnson, led the US into the quagmire
This letter was published in the February 2021 issue of Literary Review. In his otherwise excellent review of The Tyranny of Merit (LR, December 2020 – January 2021), Andrew Adonis challenges…Read more…
Review: Guarding Hitler: The Secret World of the Führer, by Mark Felton
According to author Mark Felton, the people put in charge of keeping Adolf Hitler safe and well actually created the modern practice of body-guarding, sometimes known as ‘close…Read more…
Thomas Friedman is wrong about ‘democratic socialism’
I sent this letter off to the New York Times two weeks ago. They have not published it. But I thought some of you might find it of interest. Thomas Friedman in his column “Trump…Read more…
Review: The Catch, by Mick Herron
While fans wait for the arrival of the seventh Slough House novel by British author Mick Herron, he has thrown some crumbs to his audience with a series of novellas — this being the most…Read more…
Review: Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends, by Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum is a great historian, a terrific journalist and a strong opponent of authoritarian regimes everywhere. But this book disappoints. It begins with a party she and her Polish husband…Read more…
Review: The Drop & The List, by Mick Herron
When I first discovered Mick Herron’s ‘Slough House’ series of books, I got completely hooked, and read all six of them in a binge lasting 24 days. And now, like so many other fans…Read more…
Review: Agent Sonya, by Ben MacIntyre
This is the story of Ursula Kuczynski, a Soviet spy who was instrumental in ensuring that Stalin was able to build an atomic bomb. So at first glance, not an entirely sympathetic character. And yet…Read more…
Review: I am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes
A young Saudi man, radicalised by the experience of seeing his father beheaded for his iconoclastic views, grows into the world’s most fearsome terrorist — known as Saracen. Deciding to take…Read more…
Review: SOE: An outline history of the Special Operations Executive 1940-46, by M.R.D. Foot
Few people knew as much about the highly-secretive SOE – whose task, according to Churchill, was to ‘set Europe ablaze’ – as M.R.D. Foot. This short book is an introduction to…Read more…
Review: The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”: The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences, by John Marks
First published more than 40 years ago, this book tells the unbelievable story of the CIA’s experiments with mind control. Some of these even pre-date the founding of the CIA itself. Its…Read more…
Review: The Pale Horse, by Agatha Christie
In many murder mysteries, the question of ‘who did it’ is less important than ‘how they did it’ – and that is certainly the case with this book. I came to read it…Read more…
Review: Hitler: His Life and Legend, by Walter C. Langer
At the height of the Second World War, Allied intelligence services grew increasingly interested in the personal life of the German Führer, Adolf Hitler. The British Special Operations Executive…Read more…
Review: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
There are not many novels — or at least not many novels I’ve read — that are set largely in libraries and archives, and whose heroes are historians. In this book, practically…Read more…
Review: What is Hypnosis? Studies in Auto and Hetero Conditioning, by Andrew Salter
Yen Lo, the Communist Chinese villain in The Manchurian Candidate was a big fan of Andrew Salter’s work. Andrew Salter, now considered one of the founders of behaviour therapy, published this…Read more…
Review: The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: Crime Conspiracy & Cover-Up: A new investigation by Tim Tate and Brad Johnson
What I liked most about this book was that the authors raise questions without answering them. Instead of asserting, as so many books of this type do, that (fill in name here) conspired to kill…Read more…
Review: The Case of Rudolf Hess – A Problem in Diagnosis and Forensic Psychiatry, edited by J.R. Rees
Imagine if at the height of the Second World War psychiatrists had the opportunity to pluck one of the Nazi leaders out of Germany and subject him to years of close observation. Imagine what we…Read more…
Review: The Manchurian Candidate, by Greil Marcus
I first came across Greil Marcus as someone who wrote about popular music — with a particular interest in Bob Dylan. It turns out that he has written about many aspects of American culture…Read more…