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3 weeks ago | 
the-tls.co.uk | Lisa Hilton |Caroline Moorehead |Lawrence Douglas |Ben Hutchinson
“Few passions are constant, but many are sincere”. The maxim is by the Marquis de Vauvenargues, one-time proprietor of the Provençal chateau where Pablo Picasso and his second wife, Jacqueline Roque, lived between 1959 and 1961, and where they are buried. Speaking to his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, the artist’s mother was blunter on the vagaries of love: “I don’t believe any woman would be happy with my son.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
the-tls.co.uk | Estelle Shirbon |Caroline Moorehead |Thomas de Waal |Heather White
In early 1982 Ethiopia’s socialist military regime, the Derg, launched an offensive against Eritrean insurgents fighting for independence in what was then a northern province of Ethiopia. The Red Star campaign, as it was called, involved months of all-out military assaults on the rebels’ stronghold at Nakfa, in Eritrea’s arid Sahel mountains, and a propaganda blitz glorifying Ethiopia’s socialist revolution and vilifying the insurgents as imperialist stooges.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
the-tls.co.uk | Thomas de Waal |Estelle Shirbon |Caroline Moorehead |Heather White
People and Trees is a pastoral set in Soviet Azerbaijan in the 1940s. If that sounds dull, then do not be deceived: Akram Aylisli’s novel is anything but. Aylisli, who recently turned eighty-seven, is best known for Stone Dreams (2012; 2022 in English), a novel that challenged his country’s ethno-nationalist orthodoxy concerning its conflict with Armenia.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
the-tls.co.uk | Caroline Moorehead
Welcome to the TLSWinner of the 2024 Niche Market Newspaper of the Year Award and proudly niche since 1902.
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Nov 6, 2024 | 
spectator.com.au | Caroline Moorehead
Few women have had more written about them, mostly of a critical, salacious nature, than Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee for whom Edward VIII gave up his crown. Much of the gossip has fed on what became known as the ‘China Dossier’, a supposed compendium of the year Simpson (or Spencer, as she then was) spent in China in the mid-1920s while she was trying to get a divorce from her heavy-drinking, abusive, naval first husband.
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Nov 5, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | Caroline Moorehead
Few women have had more written about them, mostly of a critical, salacious nature, than Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee for whom Edward VIII gave up his crown. Much of the gossip has fed on what became known as the ‘China Dossier’, a supposed compendium of the year Simpson (or Spencer, as she then was) spent in China in the mid-1920s while she was trying to get a divorce from her heavy-drinking, abusive, naval first husband.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
spectator.com.au | Caroline Moorehead
As Hilary Mantel memorably noted, history represents what people try to hide, and researching it is a question of ferreting out what they want you not to discover. Claire Hubbard-Hall’s plan to unearth the identities and lives of the legions of women who have worked unheralded in the British secret services was bold: looking for secrets in a doubly secret world.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | Caroline Moorehead
As Hilary Mantel memorably noted, history represents what people try to hide, and researching it is a question of ferreting out what they want you not to discover. Claire Hubbard-Hall’s plan to unearth the identities and lives of the legions of women who have worked unheralded in the British secret services was bold: looking for secrets in a doubly secret world. The first bureau was founded in 1909.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
wsj.com | Caroline Moorehead
As the Germans descended on Paris in June 1940, Jean Texcier, who worked for France’s Ministry of Trade, printed some advice for Parisians on how to behave toward the occupiers. He put the handbills through letter boxes and onto the seats of cafes and restaurants. Act correctly, he instructed, but remember that the Germans are victors, not tourists. Do not be helpful; nurture your anger and pretend not to understand when they speak to you.
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May 15, 2024 | 
spectator.com.au | Caroline Moorehead
In recent years, far from diminishing, the number of books on the Nazis, Occupied Europe and the Holocaust – events that now lie three quarters of a century in the past – seem only to grow. New archives are opened and attics are raided for forgotten diaries and letters. One historian who has mined them with great skill is Clare Mulley, the author of books on spies and Hitler’s pilots.
