CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
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Breaking the circle
NICK WRIGHT recommends a biography of the anti-fascist who passed secrets to the Soviets which challenges conventional accounts
CRITICAL JUNCTURE : John Cairncross’s information proved crucial to Soviet forces (pictured) at the Balttle of Kursk
TONY BURKE speaks to JOEL McIVER, co-author of the biography of bluesman John Mayall
A misfit couple unhappily ever after, a dead man walking, dodgy journos, and trench art trucking
New releases from Javon Jackson, IZE Trio, and Mal Waldron Trio
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an intriguing multi-layered depiction, dominated by a stunning impersonation of Marilyn herself
EWAN CAMERON marvels at the impossible ambition, realised with dreamlike finesse of translating Italo Calvino to the stage
Agent Moliere: The Life of John Cairncross, the Fifth Man of the Cambridge Spy Circle
by Geoff Andrews
(Bloomsbury, £20)
THE ANTI-FASCIST endeavours of the bourgeois spies for the Comintern — the Communist International — before, during and after the second world war continue to grip the imagination.
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Hundreds in Berlin gathered on January 15 to honour the US-born socialist who made East Germany his home. Florentine Morales Sandoval reports
PETER MASON applauds a stage version of Le Carre’s novel that questions what ordinary people have to gain from high-level governmental spying