The uruguayan Eduardo Galeano was once the author of elegant and charming journalism. Sadly, his new book is a dumbed-down travesty

An arcane deal for the UK to write off a chunk of Argentina's debt in exchange for an end to squabbling over the Falklands was turned down by the British government. It would have saved a lot of trouble

Dictatorships may not be lumbering behemoths, but William J Dobson overstates the extent to which authoritarians have changed their ways

A brilliant writer with remarkable political gifts, Mario Vargas Llosa is a worthy winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature