Eileen Battersby, literary correspondent at The Irish Times, has written a fine debut novel that is peppered with high-cultural references and yet manages to be a thumping good yarn, despite the fact that the first person narrator isn’t altogether likeable.

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There is a long history of ‘disinformation’ between Russia and the US. This presidential campaign, heavily affected by WikiLeaks, is laden down with it, writes David Wise

The Cold War is heading for deep freeze as Bridge of Spies (12A) opens in 1957 with the capture of Russian spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) in New York. 

WHERE do you get your ideas? — is a question most writers come to dread, and may well be one of the reasons why Frederick Forsyth has finally published his autobiography. 

GERMANY: The 3,900kg granite head of Vladimir Lenin that was removed from a Berlin square in 1991 has been unearthed for an exhibition.

Creating the music in the moment is what sets Paul Kalkbrenner apart from some of the globetrotting DJs he is normally lumped with, writes Ed Power

Mary Elise Sarotte

I am not a cruel person, I don’t want to demean anyone and I don’t want to bring their personal lives into it.

IT SPEAKS volumes for Bruce Springsteen’s popularity that his three shows in Ireland this week — Limerick tonight, Cork on Thursday and Belfast on Friday — are all sold out.

As a soldier in an army occupying West Germany, and West Berlin, I remember walking through utter devastation in Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin.

The opening today of the first life-sized Barbie Dreamhouse in Europe may be the fantasy of many little girls, but Berlin feminists are mobilising against what they call a sexist icon.

George Blake, the former British spy who was a double agent working for the Soviet KGB, has spoken about his career with pride and called himself an “exceptionally lucky man”.

Time travel provides the mobsters of 2072 with a handy way of keeping their hands clean when they need someone killed — they just send them back to 2042, where a Looper (15A) like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) will do the dirty work and dispose of the body.

May I correct one statement in Richard Fitzpatrick’s article (Features, Feb 16) on the escape of the double-agent George Blake from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 with the collaboration of Seán Bourke and assistance from Pat Pottle, my wife Anne, and myself.

Sean Bourke broke out ‘traitor’ George Blake from prison in 1966, enabling him to flee to Moscow, says Richard Fitzpatrick

JOE MACKEN doesn’t wear a suit.

Jessica Chastain is set to star in Kathryn Bigelow's Osama bin Laden death movie.

JOHN MADDEN’S The Debt (15A) opens in modern Israel, with Rachel (Helen Mirren) attending the launch of her daughter’s book, which details a mission carried out by three Mossad agents in East Berlin during the 1960s.

John Madden directs a gripping English-language remake of the Israeli film 'Ha-Hov' about three retired Mossad agents, who come face-to-face with the spectres of the past.

Sue Leonard finds there is more than a hint of autobiography in Douglas Kennedy’s tenth novel, which could possibly be his finest work.

From film to fashion, movies to music, food to travel, our critics reveal their Hot 100 choices for the summer ahead.

SO now we have a glimpse of what it must have been like living in East Berlin as the wall came crashing down.

Lights Out in Wonderland

THE dominoes fell, one by one, all 1,000 of them, covering 1.5km along the path of the 43km fence that kept Berliners imprisoned for 28 years.

HELLO, sports fans! Do you feel unrefreshed while attending a big match? Want to party like it’s 1999, but not pay Celtic Tiger prices for a pint?

TEMPELHOF Airport has been many things to Berlin — a lifeline to German areas cut off after the great war, a centre of the city’s defence in WWII, and the hub of the airlift that ensured West Berlin’s survival over the cold war.

Heinz Barth, a former Nazi SS officer who was convicted of involvement in a massacre of French villagers in 1944, has died, a priest in the German town where he lived said today. He was 86.

Robert De Niro wants his Cold War movie The Good Shepherd to be the first of a trilogy of films about the conflict.

Germany’s highest administrative court has upheld claims to real estate in Berlin by heirs of a Jewish family who lost their department store fortune under the Nazis.

I SHARE Rónán Mullen’s concerns (Irish Examiner, July 6) about abuses of human rights going on among certain religious minorities in Europe (though my concerns are not, as is the case with Mr Mullen, limited to the excesses of Muslims).

Fifteen years after the Berlin Wall fell, 24% of West Germans surveyed said they wanted it back, according to a poll published today.

Two former members politburo that ruled communist East Germany were placed on probation today for failing to prevent shooting deaths at the Berlin Wall in the 1980s.

The former communists of East Germany are to take their first share of power in the capital since it was reunited more than a decade ago.