The bloody Cold War history of South Korea’s picturesque Jeju Island is not well known, even among mainland Koreans. And yet it’s estimated that more than 25,000 civilians were killed as part of a government-led anti-communist campaign between 1947 …

The London-based literary agent Ed Victor once said to the writer Susan Johnson that he’d never come across a people more insecure about their relationship with their homeland than Australians – except, of course, the Russians. So perhaps it makes …

You enter the hedge maze planted with lilly pilly shrubs. Dead end follows dead end as each twist and turn yields more of the same. You begin to get weary. And then there’s something remarkable. Right at the end of the labyrinth, waiting like an oracle …