Ian Thomson first wrote the Times Literary Supplement in the late 1980s, contributing on a range of subjects. The TLS first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to the Times, but became a separate publication in 1941.
In the Beginning was Boredom: Alberto Moravia, chronicler of bourgeois ennui
Published: 25 September 2015
Published: 01 July 2011
Estonian Life Stories ed Rutt Hinrikus.”Most of my life’s journey is behind me”, says one contributor, with evident relief. In 1941 her sister had vanished in the deeps of Novosibirsk, a statistic among the millions of Siberian dead.
Graham Greene’s chance encounter with a model spy
Published: 01 March 2006
Graham Greene in Tallinn. Article.
Published: 02 July 2014
Verve by Richard Havers. At funeral in New Orleans in 1901, Joe “King” Oliver played a blues-toned dirge on the trumpet. This was the new music that they would soon call jazz. A century on from the hothouse stomps of Duke Ellington and the angular doodlings of Thelonious Monk, jazz survives as an important musical…
Published: 24 June 2014
Hatchet Job by Mark Kermode. Mark Kermode reviews films for a living. His forte, in the minds of many, is the scathing put-down; any director he considers overrated (or who has perhaps undeservedly won an Oscar) is neatly tossed and gored.
Published: 03 January 2014
Of Jewish Race by Reno Modiano. Translated by Mirna Cicioni and Susan Walker.
Published: 22 November 2013
Between Giants: The battle for the Baltics in World War II by Pritt Buttar.
Published: 12 April 2013
Nessuna Pieta per Pasolini by Stefano Maccioni, Domenico Valter Rizzo, Simona Ruffini.
Published: 01 June 2012
Estonia by Alexander Theroux.
Published: 13 April 2012
Mafia Brotherhoods by John Dickie.
Published: 20 January 2012
Jimmy Cliff by David Katz.
Published: 25 November 2011
Studio One Records by Steve Barrow and Stuart Baker.
Published: 29 April 2011
Dog Heart by Diana McCaulay.
Published: 21 January 2011
Bossa Nova by Giles Peterson and Stuart Baker.
Diaries of Mussolini’s mistress
Published: 30 June 2010
Mussolini Segreto by Claretta Petacci. In March 1919, an obscure political agitator, Benito Mussolini, assembled a ragbag of black-shirted followers in Milan and launched the movement that was to become, two years later, the National Fascist Party. As a child growing up in Fascist Italy, Claretta Petacci was dutifully adoring of…
Published: 07 May 2010
Murder Without Hatred: Estonians and the Holocaust by Anton Weiss-Wendt.
British fiction and the cultural in-between
Published: 22 April 2009
Black West Indian culture is synonymous with youth culture in Britain today, where a Jamaican inflection has long been hip even among white teenagers. In recent years, a cross-cultural genre of British fiction has evolved out of this urban ethnic ferment. Hip-hop savvy and brocaded with…
