In this dazzling exploration of one of the most contradictory periods of literary and artistic achievement in modern history, journalist Andy McSmith evokes the lives of more than a dozen of the most brilliant artists and writers of the twentieth century. Taking us deep into Stalin's Russia, Fear and the Muse Kept Watch asks the question: can great art be produced in a police state? For although Josif Stalin ran one of the most oppressive regimes in world history, under him Russia...

"As well as being one of the leading political journalists of his generation, Andy McSmith's varied life has brought him into contact with a huge variety of people, high and low, whom he describes with an acute eye for character. His book Strange People I Have Known is a fast-paced and entertaining read that brings deep insight into British political life." – Bill Browder"A fascinating memoir which gives a revelatory insider's account of the bigges...

In this dazzling exploration of one of the most contradictory periods of literary and artistic achievement in modern history, journalist Andy McSmith evokes the lives of more than a dozen of the most brilliant artists and writers of the twentieth century. Taking us deep into Stalin's Russia, Fear and the Muse Kept Watch asks the question: can great art be produced in a police state? For although Josif Stalin ran one of the most oppressive regimes in world history, under him Russia...

The 1980s was the revolutionary decade of the twentieth century. To look back in 1990 at the Britain of ten years earlier was to look into another country. The changes were not superficial, like the revolution in fashion and music that enlivened the 1960s; nor were they quite as unsettling and joyless as the troubles of the 1970s. And yet they were irreversible. By the end of the decade, society as a whole was wealthier, money was easier to borrow, there was less social upheaval, less unce...

Look for The Land of Sweet Forever, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces by Harper Lee, coming October 21, 2025.Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American ReadHarper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred...

**PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • This magisterial and acclaimed history offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost.“A tragic testimony to how evil ideologically inspired dictatorships can be.” —The New York Times**A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the CenturyThe Gulag—a vast array of Soviet concentrat...

Now with a new chapter on the end of the chumocracy era - and Oxford's upcoming elite for 2050.THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2022A TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BEST BOOK OF 2023Power. Privilege. Parties.It's a very small world at the top.'Brilliant ... traces Brexit back to the debating chambers of the Oxford Union ...

**Winner of the British Book Awards History Book of the YearLonglisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize**This thrilling biography of Stalin and his entourage during the terrifying decades of his supreme power transforms our understanding of Stalin as Soviet dictator, Marxist leader and Russian tsar.Based on groundbreaking research, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals in captivating detail the fear and betrayal, privilege and debauchery, family life and murderous cruelty of t...

WINNER OF THE POLITICAL BOOK AWARDS POLITICAL HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2014.Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Profumo scandal, An English Affair is a sharp-focused snapshot of a nation on the brink of social revolution.Britain in 1963 – Harold Macmillan was the Prime Minister of a Conservative government, dedicated to tradition, hierarchy and, above all, old-fashioned morality. But a breakdown of social boundaries saw nightclub host...

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...

'THE POLITICAL BOOK OF THE YEAR' Tim ShipmanA blistering narrative exposé of infighting, skulduggery and chaos in Corbyn's Labour party, now revised and updated.* A Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times and i Newspaper Book of the Year *Left Out tells, for the first time, the astonishing full story of Labour's recent transformation and historic defeat.

A vivid, human and radical history of one of the most powerful revolutionary movements of the twentieth century - told through the lives and in the voices of countless forgotten men and women**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**'Lush, high-tempo, strikingly poignant ... The relevance for our present moment is impossible to ignore' Guardian'Thrillingly energetic, delightful, vivid'