20th-century history
Fighting every inch of the way: the Italian Campaign of 1943
When Allied forces landed at Salerno on 9 September, they expected an easy run to Rome. But the intelligence proved dangerously faulty, as James Holland explains
The phoney mystics who fooled the West
Many suspect mystics have exploited naive westerners in search of spiritual enlightenment over the past century, Philip Hensher discovers
A divided city: the Big Three fall out in post-war Berlin
Adam Sisman describes the toxic atmosphere in Berlin after the end of the second world war
Yalta was a carve-up — and the Poles are understandably still bitter about it
‘The strong do what they can. The weak suffer what they must.’ Thucydides’ principle expresses an uncomfortable truth. The eight-day…
How on earth did North Vietnam prevail against the world’s greatest power?
The 50th anniversary of the Vietnam war has produced an outpouring of books, along with Ken Burns’s 18-hour television spectacular,…
