Richard Walker

A local leader of the Mara gang (photo: Getty)

The new mafias that rule the world

30 January 2016 9:00 am

You may not have heard of the Maras. Or Barrio 18. Or the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or the Zatas,…

Peking, c. 1290 (private collection), from ‘The Book of Ser Marco Polo’, edited by Henry Yule, 1903

The real mystery is how it got published

24 January 2015 9:00 am

As a boy I spent quite a lot of my free time trying to fake up ancient-looking documents. This hopeless…

Sudan was always an invented country. Maybe we should invent it again

19 April 2014 9:00 am

Sudan — a country that ceased to exist in 2011 — is or was one of the last untouristed wildernesses…

Hope for one of the most turbulent, traumatised regions in the world

25 January 2014 9:00 am

John Keay’s excellent new book on the modern history of South Asia plunges the reader head first into some wildly…

According to legend, the cross-dressing 18th-century Irishwoman Mary Read outdid her fellow male pirates when it came to pure violence

The pirate myth

23 November 2013 9:00 am

Hear the word ‘pirate’ and what picture springs to your mind? I see a richly-bearded geezer in a tricorne hat…