Peter Carty

A horrifying glimpse of Syria’s torture cells

30 September 2023 9:00 am

More than 100 interviews with surviving detainees and former prison workers reveal how profoundly shocking President Assad’s regime continues to be

Steam trains make a comeback under the guise of heritage

1 May 2021 9:00 am

So far as most of us are concerned, steam trains vanished in a puff of smoke back in the 1960s,…

Zimbabwe’s chaotic history has at least produced some outstanding fiction

18 January 2020 9:00 am

Tsitsi Dangarembga’s arresting Nervous Conditions appeared in 1988 and was the first novel published in English by a black Zimbabwean…

The deadly war game of the Battle of the Atlantic

11 January 2020 9:00 am

My father served in the Royal Navy during the second world war. He drank over-proof rum and smoked unfiltered cigarettes,…

Aung San Suu Kyi in 2013. Credit: Getty Images

Aung San Suu Kyi couldn’t save Burma — but tourism can

27 July 2019 9:00 am

My uncle Edward did not like talking about his service in Burma during the second world war. When I asked…

From a Low and Quiet Sea: making art from a perilous journey

24 March 2018 9:00 am

Donal Ryan is one of the most notable Irish writers to emerge this decade. So far he has produced five…

Women sort coffee beans at the Farmers’ Cooperative Union outside Bonga, in the heart of the Kafa region

Kafa, the birthplace of coffee, was a kingdom straight out of Rider Haggard

17 February 2018 9:00 am

For many of us, coffee is the lift that eases the load of our working day. Yet the sharpened mental…

Early 20th-century wall painting in the ‘open-air museum’ town of Mandawa, Rajasthan

The best way to see India — by train

16 December 2017 9:00 am

‘I went to a restaurant the other day called Taste of the Raj. The waiter hit me with a stick…

Robert Louis Stevenson, photographed in Samoa shortly before his death

The last great adventure

2 September 2017 9:00 am

Towards the end of his life, Robert Louis Stevenson travelled widely in the central and southern Pacific Ocean. As well…

The last great pandemic

27 May 2017 9:00 am

The symptoms of the Spanish flu could be ghastly. Perhaps Laura Spinney should have chosen her title with more care…

A mother and child, refugees from Raqqa, wait to cross into Turkey in September 2014

Descent into hell

11 March 2017 9:00 am

In my work as a reviewer, a small, steady proportion of all the books publishers send me concern the Holocaust.…

A mother and child, refugees from Raqqa, wait to cross into Turkey in September 2014

Descent into hell

9 March 2017 3:00 pm

In my work as a reviewer, a small, steady proportion of all the books publishers send me concern the Holocaust.…