Is this the age of dictators?” asked veteran journalist Sir Sidney Low. He was writing in September 1923, the month in which a military coup brought Miguel Primo de Rivera to power in Spain. At the sa

A round 3.30pm on 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker. Minutes later, his still warm body was carried outside by loyal staffers and burned in the Reich Chancellery gardens. H

Andrew Kahn and Mark Lipovetsky, editors All the World on a Page A critical anthology of modern Russian poetry 560pp. Princeton University Press. £35 (US $39.95). Russian modernist poetry has long bee

In a prisoner-of-war camp in western Ukraine, a former miner from the east is being interviewed about how he ended up fighting for Russia. His speech is slurred and one arm paralysed: the results not

RAIL Columnist

This moment is surely imbued with the most global symbolism. It was when, according to the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, adventurers sailed across the north Atlantic from settlements on the west coast of