Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph

Ian Thomson began to contribute to the Telegraph in the late 1980s. Here is a selection of his recent reviews and articles:

Did Pasolini predict his own murder?

11 Oct 2014

Early in the morning of November 2 1975, in Idroscalo, a shanty town outside Rome, the 53-year-old Italian film-maker and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini …

Haiti returns to the tourist map

27 July 2014

…Change cannot come too soon; I can’t wait to go back. Ian Thomson’s ‘Bonjour Blanc: A Journey Through Haiti’ is published by Vintage in a new and revised edition… 7 Comments

House of Ashes by Monique Roffey, review: ‘knuckle-whitening’

22 July 2014

In 1970, Trinidad was convulsed by Black Power activists who hoped that Africa and African culture would provide an antidote to the …

The Haunted Life and Other Writings by Jack Kerouac, review

19 Mar 2014

Jack Kerouac, an alcoholic malcontent, put the Beat generation on the map with his 1957 novel On the Road. A hymn to life on the open highway, …

How to create a fairer tax system for the less-well-off

06 Mar 2014

…James P S Thomson FRCS London N1 Zero gravity SIR – What is all the fuss about Gravity? Apart from the scenery created by clever technology, the story is implausible, the acting by the principal performers less than memorable, and the ending laughable…

Otto Dov Kulka: The most powerful writer on Auschwitz since Primo Levi

27 Feb 2014

…Not that the material was intended for publication; rather, it was part of a private journey of self-exploration. In 2011, impressed by some diary fragments Kulka had showed him, the British historian Ian Kershaw encouraged the academic to send a draft manuscript to Penguin in London, which instantly…

The Private Life, by Josh Cohen, review

18 Nov 2013

Increasingly, cyberspace is where we are judged by others and, on occasion, even destroyed. If this sounds exaggerated, consider how a stranger …

In Times of Fading Light by Eugen Ruge, review

28 Jun 2013

Communist East Germany was a melancholy, out-at-elbow place. The inhabitants looked cowed and harried; in East Berlin no one dallied outside …

The Last Man in Russia and the Struggle to Save a Dying Nation by Oliver Bullough: review

15 Apr 2013

The illusion of drink-fuelled happiness is familiar to most, even if the hangover seems a cruel price to pay. You could say that alcoholism is …

The British Dream by David Goodhart: review

09 Apr 2013

Britain has a long and noble tradition of sheltering casualties in a totalitarian age. My mother, a Balt whose family was persecuted by Hitler …

Calcutta by Amit Chaudhuri: review

27 Feb 2013

In the Western imagination, Calcutta (or Kolkata) is a city shadowed by poverty and urban wretchedness. Mother Teresa made tending to the poor …

Pictures of the day: 11 February 2013

11 Feb 2013

 Hiking in the Italian Alps

11 Feb 2013

…and immensity of the mountains; it had been a journey worth making. Ian Thomsontravelled to Turin with Kirker Holidays (kirkerholidays.com) and booked mountain refuges, from €25 per person per night, through the Cogne Tourist Board (cogneturismo.it)

The Blind Man’s Garden by Nadeem Aslam: review

08 Feb 2013

Nadeem Aslam’s harrowing fourth novel unfolds in a fictional town in Pakistan in the aftermath of 9/11. In pages of fine-crafted prose, Aslam …

The Robber of Memories by Michael Jacobs: review

26 Nov 2012

…*Ian Thomson‘s The Dead Yard: a Story of Modern Jamaica is published by Faber The Robber of Memories: a River Journey Through Colombia by Michael Jacobs