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