Communism
No golf, no bridge, scared of champagne – it’s tough being a leftie
No golf, no bridge, a tortured relationship with champagne… lefties deserve your sympathy, not your scorn
1956: the year of living dangerously
The book of the year has long been a favoured genre in popular history, and is a commonplace today. While…
The tortured genius of Shostakovich
When I look at the black-and-white photograph of Julian Barnes on the flap of his latest book, the voice of…
The integrity and chain-smoking of these East German Commies is rather attractive
No one remembers this now but there really was a period, not so long ago, when the Eighties were universally…
What happened to British communism?
Like most trade unionists in the 1970s and 80s I worked with a fair few communists. Men like Dickie Lawlor,…
James Klugmann and Guy Burgess: the wasted lives of spies
Geoff Andrews’s ‘Shadow Man’, James Klugmann, was the talent-spotter, recruiter and mentor of the Cambridge spy ring. From 1962, aged…
What drove Europe into two world wars?
Sir Ian Kershaw won his knight’s spurs as a historian with his much acclaimed two-volume biography of Hitler, Hubris and…
The facts behind France’s most potent modern myth
Patrick Marnham unravels some of the powerful, often conflicting myths surrounding the French Resistance
The real power of free markets: not efficiency, but innovation and dumb luck
The greatest mistake made by conservatism was its overly close relationship with neo-classical economics. This was a marriage of convenience:…
Hirohito, MacArthur and other villains
The history of ‘great events’, Voltaire wrote, is ‘hardly more than the history of crimes’. Physically, the war in Asia…
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.…
Transnistria: a breakaway republic of a breakaway republic
Transnistria is not an area well-served by travel literature or, really, literature of any kind. The insubstantial-seeming post-Soviet sandwich-filling between…
Deng Xiaoping: following in Mao’s footsteps
Much has been written about Deng Xiao-ping (1904–1997), most recently by Ezra Vogel in Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of…
Germans see the best of their soul in Weimar. Everyone else, on the other hand..
For centuries hailed as the home of poetry, music and liberalism, Weimar was ruthlessly exploited by the Nazis and later served as a showcase for communism, says Philip Hensher
A Pole’s view of the Czechs. Who cares? You will
When this extraordinary book was about to come out in French four years ago its author was told by his…
Humans hunger for the sacred. Why can’t the new atheists understand that?
Atheists are blind to a fundamental human need
Talking to the ghosts of Tiananmen Square
Twenty-five years ago, Rowena Xiaoqing He, then a schoolgirl, was participating in the Tiananmen-supporting demonstrations in Canton. Far from the…
Julian Mitchell on Another Country: ‘I based it on my fury and anger and I wrote it fast and it flowed'
Robert Gore-Langton talks to Julian Mitchell about the painful roots of his hit play Another Country
The many attempts to assassinate Trotsky
Leon Trotsky’s grandson, Esteban Volkov, is a retired chemist in his early eighties. I met him not long ago in…
Secrets of the Kremlin
A building bearing testimony to the power of eternal Russia; a timeless symbol of the Russian state; a monument to…
George Orwell's doublethink
The inventor of ‘doublethink’ was consistently inconsistent in his own political views, says A.N. Wilson. And no fun at all
I was Ralph Miliband's research assistant, and this is what he was like
Memories of being Ralph Miliband’s research assistant
One Night in Winter, by Simon Sebag Montefiore - review
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s One Night in Winter begins in the hours immediately following the solemn victory parade that marked the…
Isaac & Isaiah, by David Caute - review
The scene is the common room of All Souls College, Oxford, in the first week of March 1963. It is…
Roger Scruton’s diary: Finding Scrutopia in the Czech Republic
Hay-making was easy this year, and over in good time for a holiday. I am opposed to holidays, having worked…
