the Cold War
You didn’t mess with them – the doughty matriarchs of the intelligence world
Claire Hubbard-Hall pays tribute to the legions of women who devoted their lives to the British secret service but whose efforts went largely unacknowledged
Is now the most exciting point in human history?
Since today’s computers can process information beyond human capabilities, we are on a precipice never faced before, says Yuval Noah Harari, in another sweeping narrative
Nothing was off-limits for ‘the usual gang of idiots’ at Mad
First published in 1952, the satirical magazine helped free the American youth of Vietnam War era of some of the stupidest beliefs they were supposed to hold about their country
Cold War spying had much in common with the colonial era
Influenced by Kipling’s Kim, early CIA officers combined a love of overseas adventure with a whiff of imperial paranoia, says Hugh Wilford
Keeping a mistress was essential to John le Carré’s success
The novelist himself admitted that his infidelities ‘produced a duality and tension that became a necessary drug for my writing’
Violence overshadowed my Yorkshire childhood
Catherine Taylor describes her anxiety growing up in Sheffield against an ‘uneasy backdrop’ of picketing miners, the Hillsborough disaster and a serial killer on the loose
Behind the Five Eyes intelligence alliance
In February 1941 four US officers were landed from a British warship at Sheerness, bundled into vehicles and driven to…
People of little interest: MI5’s view of left-wing intellectuals
If MI5 had a Cold War file on you – paper in those happy days – it didn’t mean they…
Berliners were punished twice – by Hitler and by the Allies
‘Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.’ Albert Einstein’s deft avoidance of the question put to…
New tactics are needed for the wars of the future
The strategic bankruptcy of the West has twice so far this century demanded that our brave soldiers risk their bodies…
Germany’s post-war recovery was no economic miracle
Lord Macaulay wrote that ‘during the century and a half which followed the Conquest there is, to speak strictly, no…
Ian Kershaw recounts Europe’s recovery from WWII – have the good times run their course?
When I reviewed the first volume of Sir Ian Kershaw’s wrist-breaking history of the last 100 years of Europe, To…
His dark materials
In this giant, prodigiously sourced and insightful biography, John A. Farrell shows how Richard Milhous Nixon was the nightmare of…
A blast from the past
If you had to choose one book that both typified spy fiction and celebrated what the genre was capable of…
How capitalism really works
Deirdre McCloskey has been at work for many years on a huge project: to explain why the world has become…
Sins of the past haunt the latest crime fiction
It’s often the case that present-day crimes have their roots in the past. Ian Rankin’s Even Dogs in the Wild…
The four men who averted the Apocalypse
Robert Service’s account of the greatest turning point in modern history is unlikely to be bettered, says Sherard Cowper-Coles
Everything you always wanted to know about Sixties pop —and more
It might seem an odd choice, but after reading Jon Savage’s new book, I think if I had a time…
The King of Kings and I: Haile Selassie, by his great nephew
Great men rarely come smaller than Haile Selassie. In photographs, the golden crowns, pith helmets and grey felt homburgs he…
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…
Leonid Yakobson: the greatest ballet genius you’ve never heard of
On YouTube there’s a brief dance video of a Viennese waltz so enchanting that not even Fred and Ginger in…
What went so wrong for Vaclav Havel?
The unforgettable moment a quarter of a century ago when the Berlin Wall came down was the most vivid drama…
Hugh Trevor-Roper: the spy as historian, the historian as spy
Shortly after the war began in September 1939, the branch of the intelligence services called MI8, or the Radio Security…
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…
When intellectuals are clueless about the first world war
No one alive now has any adult experience of the first world war, but still it shows no sign of…
