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

A Russia of trees and liberty and peace: ...

Julián Casanova Franco 528pp. Crítica. €22.90. Giles Tremlett El Generalísimo Franco: Power, violence and the quest for greatness 528pp. Bloomsbury. £30. Juan Carlos I, with Laurence Debray Reconcilia

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 January 1979, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled Iran with “his wife, some jewels and a clod of earth”, says author Christopher de Bellaigue in the Financial Times. A measure of how the country’s Isla

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” Antonio Gramsci’s words, written in prison near Bari almost 100 years ago, ring out to us now. The politi