The Russia Anxiety: UK paperback out now
The UK paperback of The Russia Anxiety, published by Penguin, comes out this week. ‘A brilliant dissection of western prejudices about the Russians… This exciting and provocative book blows apart … Continue reading
Exiting the EU on Siegfried Sassoon’s time machine
Until today, Britain has been a member of the European Union for almost 47 years. Only people in their mid-fifties can have accurate memories of British life before accession to … Continue reading
Waiting for dawn
Tibor Szamuely sounded like a pessimist, and with good reason. Years after his release from the Gulag, he wrote a compelling book, The Russian Tradition, whose central argument is that … Continue reading
James Bond’s Russia question
James Bond is faced with a unique Russia question in Ian Fleming’s fifth 007 novel, From Russia With Love, published in 1957. Does Tatyana Romanova really want to defect from … Continue reading
Roy Jenkins in Moscow: a Brexit story
Seeking solace from Brexit, one could turn to the life of Roy Jenkins (1920-2003). As Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jenkins was among the most distinguished Labour politicians … Continue reading
Brexit: the view from the Soviet Union
On March 17 1991, the people of the Soviet Union voted in a referendum to resolve the greatest question of the time: should the USSR remain a single country, composed … Continue reading
The Nazi-Soviet pact: a moral problem
‘Historians often dislike what happened or wish that it had happened differently,’ wrote AJP Taylor, the great British historian-provocateur of the last century. He concluded: ‘There is nothing they can … Continue reading
The sleepwalkers
Would you trust a historian to get it right about Ukraine? After all, historians often get lost on the path of current events and fail to make predictions. They disagree confusingly with … Continue reading
