The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels by Tristram Hunt

The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin’s Service by Andrew Meier

Political power and its abuses are the central concerns of three fine new productions: England People Very nice, Burnt by the Sun and King Lear

Poland used to be written off as a failed state. But it has survived Nazism and communism to become a model for Europe

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

Conor Cruise O'Brien (1917-2008): A tribute to Ireland's greatest modern public intellectual

Just over 70 years ago, a group of intellectuals met in Paris to revive liberalism. Their views have an eerie echo today

‘The post-1989 temptation in Prague has been two-fold. The first has been to legislate the totalitarian past out of existence, the second has been to copy the liberal West blindly at a lag of 20 years’

Soviet Constructivism is coming to town in the (emotionless) shape of an exhibition at Tate Britain

A new film about Che Guevara stirs memories of a grim and bloody episode in his career