The Rasputin legend
He dazzled the tsar and tsarina with his virile charisma. But, as Antony Beevor shows, he also inspired their demise
By
Ian Thomson
Ian Thomson is a senior lecturer in creative non-fiction at the University of East Anglia and the biographer of Primo Levi.
Latest articles
All Articles
Arvo Pärt: the holy minimalist who defied the Soviets
Now 90, the Estonian composer has spent a lifetime crafting music of profound beauty.
By
The politics of murder
The history of assassinations, as Simon Ball points out in his book Death to Order, is one of myth-making,…
By
How a Moscow archivist exposed the KGB, file by file
Gordon Corera’s account of the audacious counter-intelligence operative Vasili Mitrokhin is non-fiction that reads like a spy thriller.
By
How cities change at night
Matthew Beaumont’s The Walker asks how the nocturnal metropolis differs from the city in daylight.
By
Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season: a dyspeptic vision of Mexico today
This international Booker Prize-shortlisted “masterwork” is structurally adventurous, and rife with narco-style violence and expletive-heavy prose.
By
The voice of the Jewish East End
The neglected postwar fiction of Alexander Baron.
By
From Cuba to Greeneland: Graham Greene’s long relationship with the island republic
The story behind Our Man in Havana reveals a life tied up with espionage and betrayal.
By
The return of the F-word: neo-fascism in 2018
Vainglorious sexual antics, boastfulness and scorn for democracy: has the blackshirt spirit returned in Donald Trump?
By