Ian Thomson 19 November 2005
The Third Man’s Vienna: Celebrating a Film Classic Brigitte Timmermann
Shippen Rock Publishing, pp.416, 33
Public visits to the sewers of Vienna are rare: the clammy atmosphere can cause breathing problems. Nevertheless in 1994 I visited them with a local Graham Greene enthusiast, Brigitte Timmer-… Read more
Ian Thomson 22 October 2005
Mussolini’s Italy R. J. B. Bosworth
Allen Lane, pp.692, 25
When Benito Mussolini invaded Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1935, Italians were filled with jingoist pride. The dictator triumphantly announced the conquest of the promised sub-Saharan kingdom. ‘He’s like a god,’… Read more
Ian Thomson 25 June 2005
Renaissance Woman Gaia Servadio
- B. Tauris, pp.274, 19.95
Lucrezia Borgia was not the fiend history made her out to be. According to Gaia Servadio, she was a radiant symbol of Renaissance woman and, moreover, a judicious administrator of… Read more
Ian Thomson 11 December 2004
Hawkwood: The Diabolical Englishman Frances Stonor Saunders
Faber, pp.366, 17.99
The boil and hiss of mediaeval Hell, as conceived by Dante, is hard for us to imagine. Yet the 1935 Hollywood melodrama, The Div- ine Comedy, contains a ten-minute reconstruction… Read more
Ian Thomson 2 October 2004
Havoc Ronan Bennett
Bloomsbury, pp.244, 16.99
Born in 1956, Ronan Bennett is a Belfast writer of great gifts. His last novel, The Catastrophist, was a tense parable of conscience set in the Belgian Congo at the… Read more
Ian Thomson 6 March 2004
The Jesuits Jonathan Wright
HarperCollins, pp.334, 20
In the 16th century Montaigne voiced the fear that missionary endeavour — the white man’s ‘contagion’ — would hasten the ruin of the New World. Though Jesuits played their part… Read more
Ian Thomson 25 January 2003
I’LL TAKE YOU THERE Joyce Carol Oates
Fourth Estate, pp.290, 10.99
Joyce Carol Oates is a prolific, even prolix writer, with more than 50 novels and short-story collections to her name. Yet she writes wonderfully of life’s uncertainties and of American… Read more
Ian Thomson 30 November 2002
NOBODY’s PERFECT Anthony Lane
Picador, pp.752, 15.99
Anthony Lane has been film critic for the New Yorker since 1993, and the light lash of his humour is waspish and urbane in its New Yorker-ese. Nobody’s Perfect, a… Read more
Articles and Interviews
Ian Thomson 6 March 2004
Shortly after Christmas I went to Haiti for the first time in 13 years. The collapse of the Aristide regime was still two months away, but the Caribbean republic was… Read more
Ian Thomson 7 January 2012
Montserrat, a smoulderingly beautiful volcanic island in the British West Indies, is a 15-minute flight from Antigua. Apart from me, the only passenger on the propeller plane is a birdwatcher… Read more
Ian Thomson 17 March 2012
The other day my five-year-old Labrador was diagnosed with acute cannabis intoxication. I had been taking Olga for a walk on Hackney Downs when she disappeared behind an abandoned railway.… Read more
Travel Special – Jamaica: Meeting the queen’s man
Ian Thomson 24 March 2012
This August, Jamaica celebrates the 50th anniversary of independence. Amid the bunting and parades, talk will be of Britain’s continued presence in the island and the role of the monarchy… Read more
Ian Thomson 21 April 2012
A couple of years ago, a rescue operation was recorded at a lifeboat station in Poole, Dorset. ‘The boat was launched at 13.35p.m. following a call that a man and… Read more
Nicolas Roeg interview: ‘I hate the term “sex scene”’
Ian Thomson 13 July 2013
‘Oh, some of my films have been attacked with absolute vitriol!’ said Nicolas Roeg, 85, and still one of the darkest and most innovative of post-war British directors. We were… Read more
I proposed to my wife in Haiti. Soon I won’t be able to recognise it
Ian Thomson 16 August 2014
This summer, I returned to Haiti for the first time in ten years. I was itching to see how the Caribbean republic had changed after the terrible earthquake of 12… Read more