Ian Thomson

Andrea Bajani’s novel The Anniversary is presented as a fierce rejection of the sanctity of family, narrated by a man who escapes a violent, authoritarian household in northern Italy. The review connects the novel’s domestic terror and patriarchal dynamics to broader Italian histories of family capitalism, Mafia structures, political violence, the Red Brigades, the post-Aldo Moro “strategy of tension” and Silvio Berlusconi’s media-driven politics. It praises the novel’s disturbing imagery and international success, while noting that some of its prose is overly literary.

Ian Thomson presents Stephen King as the pre-eminent horror writer of his era and a popular storyteller comparable to Charles Dickens. Reviewing Caroline Bicks's Monsters in the Archives, he highlights the book's examination of drafts and archival materials from Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, Night Shift and Pet Sematary, showing how King's literary influences, revisions and craftsmanship shaped these works. The review explores King's alcoholism, his engagement with horror traditions from Dracula to The Exorcist, and the cultural impact of adaptations such as Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Thomson concludes that, despite reservations about King's recent novels and some shortcomings in Bicks's treatment, the study offers an excellent guide to King's enduringly dark imagination.

Jean-Noël Orengo’s book presents Albert Speer as both a Nazi war criminal and a pioneering practitioner of autofiction, drawing parallels between Speer’s deceptive memoirs and contemporary literary works. The review credits the book with functioning as a biography but criticizes its postmodern asides and self-conscious style. It emphasizes Speer’s central role in Nazi architecture and armaments production, his exploitation of Jewish slave labor, and Gitta Sereny’s conclusion that his claims of ignorance about the Holocaust were lies.

Antony Beevor’s biography presents Rasputin as a charismatic but manipulative Siberian mystic whose influence over Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra intensified public hostility toward the Romanov monarchy. The review places his rise amid the 1905 Revolution, Russia’s defeat in the war with Japan, religious conservatism, antisemitism and the First World War. Rasputin’s alleged healing of Alexei’s haemophilia deepened Alexandra’s dependence on him, while rumors of sexual misconduct, German sympathies and political meddling made him a symbol of imperial corruption. His 1916 murder failed to save the monarchy: military collapse, revolutionary unrest and Nicholas II’s refusal to abandon autocracy led to his abdication in March 1917 and the family’s execution in 1918.

A highly opinionated guide to notable non-fiction expected in 2026 highlights memoirs by Brian Dillon, Herta Müller, Melvyn Bragg, Christopher de Hamel, Sajid Javid and Naz Shah; biographies of figures including James Baldwin, John Berger, Mario Vargas Llosa, Rasputin and Stephen King; and histories of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Syria, Gaza, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Italy and organized crime. The selection also covers artificial intelligence, liberalism, contemporary conservatism, music, poetry, travel and alcohol use. The strongest recommendations favor literary memoir, rigorous historical analysis and culturally significant biographies, while books about Putin, Assad, AI and political extremism receive notably darker treatment.

Jimmy Cliff’s music and performance in the 1972 film The Harder They Come played a decisive role in bringing reggae to audiences outside Jamaica. The film, directed by Perry Henzell and featuring Cliff’s songs, portrayed the hardship, violence and aspirations of Kingston’s poor while drawing on the story of outlaw Vincent “Ivanhoe” Martin. Though initially received cautiously in Britain and abroad, it gained influential support and helped open the way for Bob Marley’s international success. Cliff’s gospel-rooted, Rastafari-influenced music also encouraged British-born Black West Indians to engage with Jamaican and African heritage.

The review examines Olivia Laing’s novel The Silver Book, which reimagines the final days of Pier Paolo Pasolini amid the political and cultural turbulence of 1970s Italy. It portrays Pasolini as a Marxist, Catholic and fiercely polemical filmmaker working on Salò while confronting consumerism, fascism, social change and rumors of political violence. Through the fictional Nicholas Wade and real figures including Danilo Donati and Federico Fellini, the novel approaches the unresolved circumstances of Pasolini’s 1975 murder. The review also considers competing interpretations of Salò, contrasting its renewed importance in queer film studies with claims that it represents Pasolini’s most reactionary work.

Sudhir Hazareesingh’s Daring to Be Free argues that Afro-Atlantic resistance to slavery was driven not only by Enlightenment ideals and Christian abolitionism but also by African-influenced guerrilla tactics, marronage and Vodou or related spirit practices. The review centers on the Haitian Revolution, led by figures including Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and traces its influence on later Black liberation and Pan-African movements. It also examines Jamaican Maroon resistance, the leadership of Queen Nanny, the contradictions of Marcus Garvey’s racial politics and the continuing legacy of slavery in the Caribbean. The book is praised as a major, revelatory history, while the reviewer notes its limited treatment of the Maroons’ cooperation in suppressing Jamaica’s Morant Bay uprising.

Arvo Pärt’s religious music emerged from Estonia’s Soviet-era repression, Eastern Orthodox faith and a long search for artistic purity. After the controversy surrounding Credo and an eight-year compositional silence, he developed tintinnabuli, the sparse bell-like style heard in works including Für Alina, Tabula Rasa and Passio. Forced to leave Soviet Estonia in 1980, Pärt built an international reputation in the West while remaining relatively indifferent to fame. Now retired from public life and composition, he is celebrated through performances, archives at the Arvo Pärt Centre and 90th-anniversary events in London and Oxford.

Ian Thomson reviews Simon Ball’s Death to Order, a history of political assassination from the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip in 1914 to modern lone-actor attacks. The book examines how assassinations can trigger wars, justify political purges and shape national myths, covering figures including Stalin, Trotsky, Mussolini, Hitler, Martin Luther King Jr. and others. The review emphasizes the distinction between individual assassins and state-sponsored killers, while concluding that Ball offers an exceptionally erudite and extensively researched account of murder as an instrument of power.

Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist troubled by the abuses of Soviet communism, secretly recorded details from thousands of intelligence files and hid his notes for decades. After the Soviet Union dissolved, he and his family were taken to the West by MI6, bringing an archive that identified around 1,000 KGB agents and was later described by the CIA as an exceptional counter-intelligence gain. Gordon Corera's The Spy in the Archive presents Mitrokhin as a morally driven Russian patriot influenced by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, while acknowledging his own earlier participation in Soviet repression. The review traces Mitrokhin's disillusionment, the KGB archive transfer that enabled his covert work, and his eventual settlement in Britain, where he died in 2004.

Matthew Beaumont’s The Walker examines how cities, especially London, change after dark and how walking reshapes people’s experience of urban space. Drawing on writers including Dickens, Mayhew, Poe, Baudelaire and Stevenson, Beaumont links nocturnal wandering with poverty, marginalisation, literary creativity and psychological unease. The review also highlights the historical exclusion of women from independent nightwalking, the way architecture can appear surveillant and hostile, and the threat posed by redevelopment to distinctive urban spaces. Beaumont ultimately argues for aimless, attentive walking without smartphones or GPS as a way to recover a more immediate relationship with the city.

Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season portrays a fictional Mexican village consumed by narco-violence, misogyny, religious superstition and police corruption after the murder of a woman known as the Witch. The review praises Melchor’s dense, experimental prose, bleak atmosphere and Sophie Hughes’s translation, while noting that the novel’s relentless darkness leaves little room for hope. Its unresolved murder reinforces a broader portrait of corruption and the routine degradation of women in contemporary Mexico.