Apprentice tyrant
By Dean Parker in Books
Issue 3523 17th Nov 2007
The Stalin presented in this ripper of a book is a romantic conspirator who knows Pushkin by heart and can recite Walt Whitman.
Madrid, midnight of the century
By Dean Parker in Uncategorized
Issue 3481 27th Jan 2007
A new edition of New Zealander Geoffrey Cox's 1937 left-wing classic of a city under siege.
White nights
By Dean Parker in Travel
Issue 3471 18th Nov 2006
What better companion on a pub crawl than Fyodor Dostoevsky?
Shakespeare in life
By Dean Parker in Culture
Issue 3411 24th Sep 2005
In his excellent new book 1599, James Shapiro puts William Shakespeare into a thoroughly recognisable world.
Red Monarch
By Dean Parker in Uncategorized
Issue 3402 23rd Jul 2005
What is the legacy of Chairman Mao?
Where are the trains of yesteryear?
By Dean Parker in Travel
Issue 3389 23rd Apr 2005
A TV scriptwriter follows the path of the Orient Express, is detained by Syrians and goes looking for the ghost of Lawrence of Arabia. Sounds like pure soap opera.
The nudge, the nod, the exchange in the Gents
By Dean Parker in Culture
Issue 3367 20th Nov 2004
The life of Fintan Patrick Walsh, notorious union boss and right-hand man to Peter Fraser, spanned the period when class replaced race as the great new Zealand conflict.
What Camus knew
By Dean Parker in Uncategorized
Issue 3359 25th Sep 2004
The outsider's guide to happiness.
Encore
By Dean Parker in Culture
Issue 3325 31st Jan 2004
Stories from beyond the grave, by and about the legendary Peter Varley, actor, stately queen, bohemian, and - so he reckoned - lover of Barry Crump.