Vietnam
The rise of soapy, dead-safe drama: The Band Back Together reviewed
The Band Back Together is a newish play, written and directed by Barney Norris, which succeeds wildly on its own…
Bittersweet memories: Ti Amo, by Hanne Ørstavik, reviewed
This is a deceptively slim novel. Its 96 pages contain multitudes: two lives, past and present, seamlessly interwoven. The narrator,…
How the left thought they were right to fight the war on terror
How the left thought they were right to fight the war on terror
An interest in the bizarre helps keep melancholy at bay
Philip Hensher finds Robert Burton’s perception of the world and the human condition endlessly fascinating
The complex character of Tricky Dick
In this Age of Trump, as we cast about for some moment in American history that might help us make…
The attraction of repulsion: The Disaster Tourist, by Yun-Ko Eun, reviewed
Disaster tourism allows people to explore places in the aftermath of natural and man-made disasters. Sites of massacres and concentration…
How to lose friends and alienate people: Richard Holbrooke was a past master
You may ask yourself, is it worth one of the best American non-fiction writers producing a book of just under…
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…
Portrait of the week
Home The government published a Treasury analysis warning that an exit from the EU would plunge Britain into a year-long…
Pumped up and dangerous: going to war on drugs
‘Of all civilisation’s occupational categories, that of soldier may be the most conducive to regular drug use.’ The problem with…
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…
For William Boyd's war-photographer heroine, life is a series of accidents
Amory Clay, photographer and photo-journalist, was born in 1908, only two years after Logan Mountstuart, writer, poseur and ‘scribivelard’. Amory…
Don McCullin interview: ‘I take more than I bring. That’s not a role I’m proud of’
Jenny McCartney talks to the celebrated photojournalist about war, guilt and Aylan
Niall Ferguson's biography of Henry Kissinger is a masterpiece
I have met Dr Kissinger, properly, only three times. First, in Cairo, in 1980, when, as a junior diplomat escorting…
The future was looking bleak for a poor little Greek Boy who had turned 30, but then I met Arnaud de Borchgrave
I hate to start with a cliché, but Count Arnaud de Borchgrave d’Altena, who died in Washington DC last week,…
The wars that really are about the oil
You can’t understand any of the world’s crises without understanding petropolitics
The wounded Kennedy – and the people who gave him strength
Ten years ago, a determined historian transformed our picture of John F. Kennedy. Robert Dallek had finally got his hands…
Taki: Why JFK wouldn't have steered clear of Vietnam if he had lived
Everyone’s doing it, so I might as well jump in too. After all, I knew so many of the people…
