Bøker av Robert Templer

Indonesia will soon have a new capital city deep in the lush forests of Borneo. Nusantara will replace Jakarta, a city built by the Dutch in the 17th century that has grown into one of the largest metropolises in the world with a population of over 30 million people. The new capital could not be more different: it is planned as a forest city with 75 per cent of the land set aside to provide access for wildlife; buildings will be connected by walkways to encourage pedestrians; and there is a commitment to green energy and transport from the start. Nusantara's architects and planners, all of them Indonesian, have set out a dream of a global city to be built over the next two decades, growing to house a population of four million. President Joko Widodo has even announced plans to bid for the 2036 Olympics there. The ambition is a city that represents the diversity of Indonesia and balances economic development across the archipelago, which for decades has been concentrated on Java. That

Poison - invisible, unknown, hard to detect and deadly - taps into hard-wired anxieties about the risks of the world around us. From ancient times to the modern age, it has always created more fear than any other threats. In A Basilisk Glance: Poisoners from Plato to Putin, author Robert Templer takes us through the dark maze of poison. He traces its path from when Hercules dipped his arrows in the blood from the severed head of the Hydra to the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War in 1980s, from the death of Socrates to the use of toxins as a weapon of assassination, from the mass suicide of Jonestown in 1979 to the sarin attack in the Tokyo metro system. Today, as the war in Ukraine rages, we are reminded of the use of radioactive and nerve weapons by Russian President Vladimir Putin to kill his opponents. His targets - like other victims of poison through the ages - know that they are never safe; a cup of tea, a door handle or even their own underwear might be tainted with