the Gulag

A last-minute escape from the Holocaust

10 June 2023 9:00 am

In a profoundly moving family memoir, Daniel Finkelstein describes the miracle by which his mother, as a child, was rescued from the hell of Belsen

Stalin the intellectual: the dictator cast in a new light

5 February 2022 9:00 am

The link between mass-murdering dictators and the gentle occupation of reading and writing books is a curious one, but it…

Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales are among the most harrowing in all literature

18 January 2020 9:00 am

‘I consist of the shards into which the Republic of Kolyma shattered me,’ Varlam Shalamov once told a fellow gulag…

One Night in Winter, by Simon Sebag Montefiore - review

28 September 2013 9:00 am

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s One Night in Winter begins in the hours immediately following the solemn victory parade that marked the…