Reviews

Tartan is back in In The Tartan Turban John Keay seeks to rehabilitate the reputation of 19th century adventurer Alexander Gardner, a Scots-American who committed feats of travel far ahead of his time, traversing as he did “remotest Kafiristan” and Bam-i-Dunya, the Roof of the World – to the d

The title of this book refers to an incident in April 1945. In response to the denial by SS Guards that there were any Anglo-American prisoners being held at Ravensbrück concentration camp, Mary Lindell, the subject of what might be loosely termed a biography, bravely stepped forward and produced a

The Ruler's Guide by Chinghua Tang In 626CE Li Shimin murdered his brothers and forced his father to abdicate the throne of China’s nascent Tang dynasty, ushering in the country’s golden age and becoming Emperor Tang Taizong, the greatest of China’s Sons of Heaven.

Border by Kapka Kassabova This is a magical book and one of the very, very few to open up the wild and forgotten lands of ancient Thrace that straddle that corner of Europe where Turkey meets Bulgaria and Greece.

Anyone who wants to understand modern Russia and the collective sense of humiliation felt by the Russian people should read this powerful collection of interviews, mainly with Sovoks, those Russians brought up in the Soviet era and who lived through the transition of the crumbling one-party state in

Barrister Kieron Wood has turned what might have been a footnote of history into a highly readable account of the long-running affair between the Allied commander General Dwight D Eisenhower and his West Cork-born chauffeuse Kay Summersby (née MacCarthy-Morrogh). It may seem frivolous and dis

Striking Out, Ireland's first home-grown legal TV drama in years, premiered on RTÉ One on Sunday 1 January 2017 - so you'd be forgiven for missing it amid the New Year festivities.

Ruadhán Mac Cormaic’s book reads with such ease that you tend to forget that you’re reading an extensively researched chronicle of the cases that have shaped Ireland. Each chapter serves to educate and entertain the reader with insightful accounts of the social and political influences surround

Declan Martin’s Irish Politics in Postcards is both a fantastic read, and an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Irish history. The (mostly) unbiased commentary throughout each chapter of Irish political history unravels the intricacies of each illustration in a manner that is accessible,

“I was five years old when I learned that my grandmother lived behind a curtain.” The line that opens this book written by a former U.S. intelligence officer, Nina Willner is, of course, a reference to the Iron Curtain. Forty Autumns spans three generations of the author’s family living in Eas

Kapil Summan was greatly impressed by East West Street and spoke to the author about current threats to human rights. In The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, scientist Jared Diamond cites 20 genocides since 1950, arguing that “genocide has been part of our human and prehuman heritage for mil

Churchill and Ireland Churchill’s close links to Ireland and his involvement in Irish politics have been somewhat underplayed in most biographies, a state of affairs that is remedied in Paul Bew’s concise but thorough book.

Our ideas of Paris during the war may well have been shaped from the film Casablanca. "Well, Rick, we’ll always have Paris…" Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) says. But I would doubt few, if any of us, would have paused to consider what Paris actually meant for those living there in the period of the Second

Scottish advocate Stephen O'Rourke is impressed with a new biography of the great barrister Marshall Hall. This life of ‘The Great Defender’ and Conservative MP Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC (1858-1927) is a fascinating read, beautifully written by another English silk, Sally Smith QC.

Justice (terminally) delayed... In her excellent book Indian Summer, Alex von Tunzelmann recounts that Horace Alexander, a friend of Mahatma Gandhi’s, once wrote “I sometimes think our greatest crime against India was to turn all her best sons into lawyers.”