Book review – modern history
![The China-Russia East Route pipeline under construction in 2017. At 3,968 km in length, it is designed to carry 38 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Russia’s Far East to Shanghai. [Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Pipeline.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
China’s power grab steps up apace
Five years ago President Xi Jinping gave a speech in Kazakhstan, launching the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’, a wildly ambitious…
Has Tibet finally lost out to China?
Blessings from Beijing will inform readers who know little about Tibet, and those who know a great deal will discover…
1983: the year the world nearly ended
In 1983, Soviet spies skulked in our midnight streets to check the lights were out. The Kremlin, convinced the West…
A grand inquisitor
Hidden behind Kensington Palace, in one of London’s smartest streets, there is a grand old house which played a leading…
Genocide is named and shamed
Prosecution for genocide or crimes against humanity is now a given in international law. But before the Nuremberg Trials, these two groundbreaking notions didn’t exist. Daniel Hahn describes their origins and inspiration
Marlene Dietrich, George Orwell and the rebirth of a nation
The purpose of Lara Feigel’s book is to describe the ‘political mission of reconciliation and restoration’ in the devastated cities…
The new mafias that rule the world
You may not have heard of the Maras. Or Barrio 18. Or the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or the Zatas,…
The four men who averted the Apocalypse
Robert Service’s account of the greatest turning point in modern history is unlikely to be bettered, says Sherard Cowper-Coles
Mission near impossible
Operation Thunderbolt was, Saul David contends in this gripping book, ‘the most audacious special forces operation in history’. In June…
Even the people who make political adverts aren’t sure they work
It is a common prejudice about modern politics that it is all focus groups and spin, all public relations and…
How Putin turned Russian politics into reality TV
‘We all know there will be no real politics.’ A prominent Russian TV presenter is speaking off the record at…
The opéra bouffe that was the Bretton Woods conference
There ought to be a comic opera about the Bretton Woods conference — Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face, about Margaret,…
Talking to the ghosts of Tiananmen Square
Twenty-five years ago, Rowena Xiaoqing He, then a schoolgirl, was participating in the Tiananmen-supporting demonstrations in Canton. Far from the…
