Timothy Phillips has written a gripping account of the secret war between the British intelligence services and the Bolsheviks during the 1920s. Based largely on documents he unearthed in the…Read more…

Was Michael Foot, leader of the British Labour Party, a Soviet agent? Was Jack Jones, head of the country’s largest trade union, one as well? According to KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky, they both…Read more…

I read this book during the same week that I saw a theatrical adaptation of Albert Camus’ novel, The Plague. Both works are concerned with epidemics, but there the similarity ends. While the…Read more…

You know how you go to see a movie and all the best parts were already in the preview? That’s a bit like what happened to Bob Woodward’s 360 page book about the Trump White…Read more…

John Hersey’s account of the lives of six survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was first published just a year after the events. Despite the passage of more than seventy years, the work…Read more…

Roy Peter Clark has been teaching writing to journalists and others (including schoolchildren) for several decades — and now he has taught me.  I’ve read a number of writing books over…Read more…

This is the story of Casablanca — where the story came from, how the film was made, and its “afterlife” right up until a Facebook post by Elizabeth Warren on a recent New…Read more…

M.R. Carey has done it again. The Girl With All the Gifts was a terrific example of post-apocalyptic zombie fiction and this book is (mostly) the prequel. The problem with prequels is that you know…Read more…

To be clear, this is not a book about Martians, or even girls. The central character is a woman in her late thirties, Jean Beckett, a writer who lives in today’s London. She is writing…Read more…

I love time travel stories.  And I love history.  This book had a lot of promise.  The main character, Max (who’s female), is witty and loveable.  The book is full of action.  There are lots…Read more…

This is one of those books that I started to read, put aside, and then picked up much later and decided to give it a second chance. And it’s a good thing that I did….Read more…

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the murder of the Russian imperial family by the Bolsheviks. Among those killed were not only the hated Tsar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra, but also their…Read more…

It’s not a total mystery why I rate Mark Billingham as the best crime writer in Britain today. He’s created a wonderful lead character, Tom Thorne, with a great supporting cast who you…Read more…

No, not that candidate.  In spite of making every effort to keep up with today’s headlines (references to the Russian seizure of Crimea, North Korea’s nuclear programme and so on), author…Read more…

No, not that candidate.  In spite of making every effort to keep up with today’s headlines (references to the Russian seizure of Crimea, North Korea’s nuclear programme and so on), author…Read more…

This, the second of the Red Sparrow books, continues where the previous one left off, and offers more of the same. It’s written by a former CIA officer, so much of it has the ring…Read more…

Jason Matthews writes with such authority about the CIA that I kept thinking as I read this book — he’s either got a great imagination, or he was a player. It turns out to be…Read more…

This is normally the kind of book I love. A gritty, serial-killer crime novel set in today’s London. Having read a very favourable review, I thought I’d give it a chance. I have to say…Read more…

This books tells the tragic story of a group of young Georgian men (and one woman) who chose to hijack a Soviet airliner in November 1983 in an attempt to escape to the West. As…Read more…

Ian Kershaw’s book aims to answer just one question: why did the Germans continue to fight even after the second world war was clearly lost? He reviews a number of explanations given, ranging…Read more…