Torture

A year in the life of Ivan Chistyakov, Gulag guard

14 January 2017 9:00 am

Spare a thought for the poor Gulag guard: the rifleman standing in the freezing wind on the outside of the…

Jeremy Corbyn is taking Labour back to the 1640s

7 January 2017 9:00 am

Jeremy Corbyn will probably enjoy this book — which doesn’t mean you won’t. Asked to name the historical figure he…

The devil’s in the detail: from ‘The Last Judgment’ triptych

The enduring mystery of Hieronymus Bosch

13 August 2016 9:00 am

To call Nils Büttner a killjoy is perhaps a little unfair, but not very. The professor at Stuttgart’s State Academy…

Chairman Mao devours his foes

30 April 2016 9:00 am

Frank Dikötter, professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong and winner of the Samuel Johnson prize in 2011,…

From Jekyll back to Hyde: the changing face of Begbie

23 April 2016 9:00 am

Irvine Welsh’s 1993 debut novel Train-spotting flicked a hearty V-sign in the face of alarm-clock Britain. ‘Ah choose no tae…

Further dispatches from Syria’s maelstrom

16 April 2016 9:00 am

The mechanic, blinded in one eye by shrapnel, spent three days searching for his family in the destroyed buildings and…

Britain needs a museum of communist terror

5 March 2016 9:00 am

We need a museum to help us remember that

The dark comedy of the Senate torture report

21 February 2015 9:00 am

Like many journalists, I’m a bit of a know-it-all — when information is touted as ‘new’, especially in government reports,…

The face of evil: Irma Grese, one of the most hated of all camp guards, trained at Ravensbrück before moving to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Survivors testified to her extreme sadism, including her use of trained, half-starved dogs to savage prisoners

Process of elimination: the horrors of Ravensbrück revealed

31 January 2015 9:00 am

Concentration camps in Nazi Germany were originally set up in 1933 to terrorise Hitler’s political enemies; as war drew near,…

Catherine Parr, whose dangerously reformist ‘Lamentation’ Shardlake must recover, comes over as a sympathetic and attractive figure

The Tudor sleuth who's cracked the secret of suspense

1 November 2014 9:00 am

Some reviewers are slick and quick. Rapid readers, they remember everything, take no notes, quote at will. I’m the plodding…

Press five to report a funny man on your doorstep with strange tales of dog torture

23 August 2014 9:00 am

Strangely enough, I was in the middle of writing an article about the tactics used by the RSPCA when another…

How to avoid bankers in your nativity scene

19 October 2013 9:00 am

With an eye to the blasphemy underlying some of the loveliest Renaissance painting, Honor Clerk will be choosing her Christmas cards more carefully this year

The Free Syrian Army is being taken over by groups of jihadist thugs

4 May 2013 9:00 am

The Free Syrian Army has fallen prey to gangsters and fanatics

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