Jonathan Mirsky

The lesson of Liu Xiaobo

15 July 2017 9:00 am

Eight years into his 11-year prison term, Liu Xiaobo, China’s only Nobel Peace Prize winner, is dying. He is the…

Palmyra was one of the ancient world’s great entrepots, trading in myrrh, incense, ivory, pearls and silk

The ruin of a ruin

27 May 2017 9:00 am

In the welter of Syrian bloodshed, why should we remember the death of a single man? Because he was the…

Whisper who dares

29 December 2016 3:00 pm

Stand aside, Homer. I doubt whether even the author of the Iliad could have matched Alexis Peri’s account of the…

A girl in a million

10 December 2016 9:00 am

All readers know that good novels draw us into other worlds. I cannot think of another, however, which so alarmed…

Untold tales of Tibet

1 October 2016 9:00 am

On the night of 17 March 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama, aged 23, slipped out of the Norbulinka, his summer…