Review: You can’t say that

Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West, from the Ancients to Fake News
Eric Berkowitz, The Westbourne Press, £20.00

At the end of June, a former colleague at Index on Censorship was charged with treason. His crime? Supporting protesters in Belarus.

Andrei Aliaksandrau is now one more victim to add to the many dissenters catalogued in Eric Berkowitz’s absorbing and comprehensive history of censorship, dating back to the ancient world.

Strikingly, the brute tactics have not changed over the years. If anything, they have intensified as dictators pursue the opposition across borders. Turkey routinely kidnaps its critics, most recently abducting Orhan Inandi from Kyrgyzstan. In May, Belarus diverted a passenger plane under false pretences to detain Raman Pratasevich, a journalist.