These plays cover one thousand years of the ancient world from the golden age of Athens to 5th century Alexandria. The protagonists are Anaxagoras, Archimedes and Hypatia, scientists, mathematicians, philosophers. All three of them came into conflict with the prevalent views of the time. Anaxagoras maintained that the sun was a big burning rock of the size of the Peleponnesus. He was condemned to death on the charge of impiety. Archimedes, the first example of the efficacy of technology co...

The novel is set in the Soviet Union. It describes a well known episode in the Cold War when Soviet fighters shot down a Korean passenger plane on the 1st September 1983. The story is based on the official Soviet statements, issued on the 2nd, 3rd and 6th September. Only the third one admitted that their fighters had brought down the plane. Behind this succession of contradictory versions lies a debate. What went on behind the scenes? The main character is Nikolai Taranenko in charge of th...

This book has been written for those who know already a lot about what happened in the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1991. It is at times controversial, at times humorous, and, I hope, constantly provocative. My aim is for readers to say or at least think, Yes, I can now see things more clearly. The principal events of Soviet history are discussed. The central thesis is that the Soviet Union was far from unique, that its ideology bore nearly exclusively the marks of a religion and most of its ...

The present book is about history, written through the satirical eyes of a Hungarian refugee in the early 1960s, a few years after he settled in England. The title Past, Present and Future, together with the subtitle An Irreverent Treatment of History, explains beautifully what the book is about. Brief but profound historical judgments are made about everything that matters: socialism, capitalism, communism, Nazism, colonialism, revolution, science, religion, war and peace, and stability a...

Geniuses are few and far between. Most of them will have honors and prizes showered upon them. But there will be exceptions, numerous exceptions: We dont know how many because they never make it; they fall by the wayside. They believe themselves to be alone in a hostile world, unable to adapt, unable to bring their ideas to fruition. They detest their inferiors and detest even more their superiors. One such genius, a historian with acute observations about the past and the future, was immo...

Assassination of prominent people occurred in all countries at all times over the history of mankind. They are not random events in the sense that there is always a motive behind them. In our analysis we shall more or less adhere to the following criteria: (i) The victim must be a public personage, (ii) The assassination must be premeditated, (iii) It must be done by stealth, (iv) There must be a motive and (v) The assassin aims only at the death of the person selected. In Part I we give a...

It is a what if historical play. It considers what might have happened if Britain and France had reacted to Hitlers rearming of the Rhineland in 1936 with military power rather than ineffectual protests. Would this have prevented the Second World War?The play also shows the power of the media in guiding public opinion and raises some more general questions like: Preventative wars do they ever achieve anything? Can democracies ever win against fanatics? How far should a democratic g...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.Arguably no person in history had such a direct and negative impact on the lives of so many as Joseph Stalin. Under the Red Tsar terror knew no limits, it did not discriminate; no one was safe, no institution, no single town or village was immune. Yet, following his death in 1953, Stalin was deeply mourned. He had ‘received the country with a wooden plough, and left it with a nuclear missile shield’. And no-one else, some claime...

Stalin, like Hitler and other tyrants, won and held power because he had collaborators - hangmen. Drawing on newly released archival material, Donald Rayfield gives us a fuller and more colourful picture of Stalin's inner circle than ever before. Stalin was not the sole author of Stalinism. What motivated his chiefs of police, Feliks Dzierzynski, Viacheslav Manzhinsky, Genrikh Iagoda, Nikolai Ezhov and Lavrenti Beria? What did they want? What were their relations with the regime and its ru...

Winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize 2023*A Telegraph Book of the Year*A Times Best Book of Summer 2023*Shortlisted for the Parliamentary Book Awards*An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war – from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol.The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis ...

“A riveting tale of her family’s experience in Europe during World War II [and] a well-wrought political history of the region, told with great authority. . . . More than a memoir, this is a book of facts and action, a chronicle of a war in progress from a partisan faithful to the idea of Czechoslovakian democracy.” -- Los Angeles TimesDrawn from her own memory, her parents’ written reflections, and interviews with contemporaries, the former US Secretary of State and New York Times...

The first in Eric Hobsbawm's dazzling trilogy on the history of the nineteenth century.Between 1789 and 1848 the world was transformed both by the French Revolution and also by the Industrial Revolution that originated in Britain. This 'Dual Revolution' created the modern world as we know it.Eric Hobsbawm traces with brilliant analytical clarity the transformation brought about in every sphere of European life by the Dual Revolution - in the conduct of war ...