CIA
Rebels and whistleblowers: a choice of recent crime fiction
A veteran CIA officer gets involved in an anti-government movement in Bahrain, and a young British intelligence officer infiltrates a news service
An enjoyable new Ageing Dad drama: Disney+'s The Old Man reviewed
We men all think we’ve still got it, even when we’re well past 50 and young women look straight through…
Incoherent and conspiracy-fuelled: Adam Curtis’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head reviewed
‘History,’ wrote Edward Gibbon, ‘is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.’ In…
The power of cheap music: pop podcast round-up
Noël Coward was so right that his words have become a cliché: it is indeed extraordinary how potent cheap music…
The disaster of Vietnam and the men who can’t get over it
Many wars have outsized and enduring effects on the societies that fight them, but for Americans the Vietnam war has…
Bond would be bored in today’s MI6, says Malcolm Rifkind
Spying may be one of the two oldest professions, but unlike the other one it has changed quite a lot…
Judith Miller, Scooter Libby, and the trouble with special prosecutors
Scooter Libby’s conviction looks ever shakier – and a sign of the deep problem with America’s special prosecutors
One day the Condor and the Eagle will fly wing-tip to wing-tip
The pub was disappointingly empty, so I took my first pint of the evening upstairs, where some sort of New…
Both Belgium and the United States should be called to account for the death of Patrice Lumumba
For decades, all the outside world knew was that Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader, had been done away with.…
The dark comedy of the Senate torture report
Like many journalists, I’m a bit of a know-it-all — when information is touted as ‘new’, especially in government reports,…
A big literary beast's descent into incoherence
Something odd happened between the advance publicity for this book and its printed appearance. Trailed as addressing the troubled history…
Hooray for Homeland - Carrie’s back blasting America’s enemies to pieces with drones
One of the more welcome and surprising things about television at the moment is that Homeland (Channel 4, Sunday) is…
Doctor Zhivago's long, dark shadow
The banning of Dr Zhivago in the Soviet Union had unfortunate consequences for other fine 20th-century Russian novels, says Robert Chandler
A Colder War, by Charles Cumming - review
The title of Charles Cumming’s seventh novel is both a nod to the comfortable polarities of Cold War and also…
The American who dreamed of peace for the Arabs – but was murdered in their midst
‘Arabist’ is fast becoming an archaism. Perhaps it is already one. These days the word conjures up enchanting visions of…
William Dalrymple's notebook: How I lured Jhumpa Lahiri and Jonathan Franzen to Jaipur
In 2004, ten days after I moved my family to a new life in India, I gave a reading at…
Against Their Will, by Allen M. Hornblum - review
After the Morecambe Bay Hospital scandal a new era opens of compassion, -whistle-blowing, naming names and possible prosecutions. But what…
