Owen Matthews
Owen Matthews is an historian and journalist who has written extensively about Russia.
Georgia on my mind
There is an exodus of Muscovites with money to Tbilisi and Turkey
The fanatical commissar of killing
An engaging and thoroughly readable new biography on Boris Savinkov
Making art of the Holocaust
As dramatic opera, The Passenger inhabits a grey zone of guard–prisoner relations
WHO do they think they are?
Politicians should be more sceptical about ideology packaged as “public health”
Peers but not equals
Ferdinand Ries: Symphonies 1&2 (Ondine); Franz Clement: Solo violin works (Naxos)
Messing with the master’s work
Beethoven: Emperor Concerto; Brett Dean: A Winter’s Journey (Orchid)
Moral progress has happened not because of, but in spite of woke activism
People who have enabled falsehoods and abuse cannot take credit for civilisational advances
Poland’s border crisis belongs to the rest of Europe too
A soldier’s tragic death has exacerbated tensions on the border with Belarus
This isn’t about me
Who? Me? A future Conservative Party leader? Well, if you say so…
Giving Mozart a makeover
Mozart: The Salzburg Project (Warner)
When things could only get better
Fans of the 1990s aren’t nostalgic reactionaries. They celebrate an era of optimism, peace, prosperity and great popular culture
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Apart from the aqueducts, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education, wine, public baths and town planning