Diary

R.W. Johnson, an emeritus fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, lives in Cape Town, where he is completing a book on South Africa since the advent of democracy.

Other articles by this contributor:

Her Boy · Mark Thatcher

Mr Shepperd to you · Classes and Cultures: England 1918-51 by Ross McKibbin

How Mugabe came to power · R.W. Johnson talks to Wilfred Mhanda

Burning Blankets · Robert Mugabe’s latest tidy-up

Nerds, Rabbits and a General Lack of Testosterone · Major and Lamont

Where do we go from here? · Zimbabwe

Cads · Roosevelt’s Secret War: FDR and World War Two Espionage by Joseph Persico.

Rogue’s Paradise · The Russians and the Anglo-Boer War by Apollon Davidson and Irina Filatova