The Kremlin's Noose (Paperback)

Vladimir Putin’s Bitter Feud with the Oligarch Who Made Him Ruler of Russia

Amy Knight

A Guardian Book of the Day
'By telling the story of Putin and Berezovsky – a sort of modern reincarnation of Stalin and Trotsky – Knight shines a penetrating light on post-communist Russia'

In The Kremlin's Noose Amy Knight tells the riveting story of Vladimir Putin and the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who forged a relationship in the early years of the Yeltsin era.

Berezovsky later played a crucial role in Putin's rise to the Russian presidency in March 2000. When Putin began dismantling Boris Yeltsin's democratic reforms, Berezovsky came into conflict with the new Russian leader by reproaching him publicly. Their relationship quickly disintegrated into a bitter feud played out against the backdrop of billion-dollar financial deals, Kremlin in-fighting and international politics.

Dubbed the 'Godfather of the Kremlin' by the slain Russian-American journalist Paul Klebnikov, Berezovsky was a successful businessman and media mogul who had an outsized role in Russia after 1991. Worth a reported $3 billion by 1997, Berezovsky engineered the re-election of Yeltsin as president in 1996 and negotiated an end to the 1995-96 Chechen war. Despite his own wealth, power and influence, once he became Putin's enemy, Berezovsky was forced into exile in Britain, where he waged a determined campaign to topple Putin. Kremlin authorities responded with bogus criminal charges and demanded Berezovsky's extradition. Death threats soon followed. In March 2013, after losing a British court battle with another Russian oligarch, Berezovsky was found dead at his ex-wife's mansion outside London. Whether he died from suicide or murder remains a mystery.

The Kremlin's Noose sheds crucial new light on the Kremlin's volatile politics under Yeltsin and Putin, helping us understand why democracy in Russia failed so badly. Knight provides a fascinating narrative of Putin's rise to power and his authoritarian rule, told through the prism of his relationship with Russia's once most powerful oligarch, Boris Berezovsky.

Amy Knight earned her PhD in Russian politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has taught at the LSE, Johns Hopkins, SAIS and Carleton University. She worked for eighteen years at the US Library of Congress as a Soviet/Russian affairs specialist.

Rope (Hardback)

How a Bundle of Twisted Fibres Became the Backbone of Civilization

Tim Queeney

A unique and compelling adventure through the history of rope and its impact on civilization, in the vein of single-subject bestsellers like Salt and Cod.

Tim Queeney is a sailor who knows more about rope and its importance to humankind than most. In Rope, Queeney takes readers on a ride through the history of rope and the way it weaves itself through the story of civilization. From Magellan's world-circling ships, to the 15th-century fleet of Admiral Zheng He, to Polynesian multihulls with crab claw sails, he shows how without rope, none of their adventurous voyages and discoveries would have been possible. Time traveling, he describes the building of the pyramids, the Roman Colosseum, Hagia Sophia, Notre-Dame, the Sultan Hasan Mosque, the Brooklyn Bridge, and countless other constructions that would not have been possible without rope.

Not content to just look at rope's past, Queeney examines its present and possible future and how the re-invention of rope with synthetic fibers will likely provide the strength for cables to support elevators into space. Making the story of rope real for readers, Queeney tells remarkable nautical stories of his own reliance on rope at sea. Rope is history, adventure, and the story of one of the world's most common tools that has made it possible for humans to advance throughout the centuries.

Tim Queeney is the editor of Ocean Navigator, a magazine for offshore voyager. A life-long sailor, he teaches celestial navigation, radar navigation and coastal piloting ashore ― where he tied plenty of knots and handled many a rope.

Fiesta (Hardback)

A Journey Through Festivity

Daniel Stables

A journey through human festivity, told through colourful travel narratives set at some of the world's most eye-catching festivals and interweaved with insights from the fields of anthropology, history, psychology, and folklore, examining why we celebrate festivals in the ways we do.

Fiesta explores the vibrant tapestry of human festivity, delving into the extraordinary lengths we undertake to express our cultures and commemorate life's milestones. From drunken pilgrimages to sacrificial funerals, national days to neo-pagan necromancy, festivals represent human culture at its most vivid and varied, and the resulting account is both a rich collection of travel writing and an anthropological exploration of the roles that festivals play in society. Through colourful characters, vibrant sights, and varied locales, Daniel Stables takes a curious, humanistic look at festivals across the world, unravelling the universal threads which run through our diverse global celebrations.

Daniel Stables has been working as a travel writer for the last decade, first writing guidebooks for Rough Guides, and later writing articles for National Geographic, the BBC, and national newspapers. He has won acclaim and recognition for his work, having been shortlisted for Travel Writer of the Year at the Freelance Writing Awards in 2021, and for Travel Feature of the Year at 2023's British Guild of Travel Writers awards.

The Future of Agriculture (Paperback)

Sarah Bearchell

Record rain fall and extreme climates have become a common occurrence around the world. The television news shows farmers standing in front of their flooded fields; the ground too wet to harvest one season's crop, or to plant the next. Our climate is changing, but agriculture is not just the victim of climate change – it is one of the major drivers too. Our food systems are responsible for around a third of all greenhouse gases.

In this book, Sarah Bearchell explores how agriculture is using targeted breeding, automation and precision inputs to produce more with less. She considers how we can reduce our impact by addressing problems in our food system, from packaging and transport to the incredible quantities of waste. As consumers, we can make small changes straight away and push for long term change in the wider system. Agriculture can become a force for good, but it needs our help.

Sarah Bearchell is a science writer and educator who has created educational activities for charities, learned societies and science centres and writes regularly for Aquila. The Future of Agriculture is her first book.

Foreign Agents (Paperback)

How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World

Casey Michel

Foreign Policy, Most Anticipated Books of 2024

A stunning investigation and indictment of the elements in United States' foreign lobbying industry and the threat they pose to democracy.

For years, one group of Americans has worked as foot-soldiers for the most authoritarian regimes around the planet. In the process, they've not only entrenched dictatorships and spread kleptocratic networks, but they've secretly guided U.S. policy without the rest of America even being aware. And now, journalist Casey Michel contends some of them have begun turning their sights on American democracy itself.

These Americans are known as foreign lobbyists, and many of them spent years ushering dictatorships directly into the halls of Washington, all while laundering the reputations of the most heinous, repressive regimes in the process. These lobbyists include figures like Ivy Lee, the inventor of the public relations industry – a man who whitewashed Mussolini, opened doors to the Soviets, and advised the Nazis on how to sway American audiences. They include people like Paul Manafort, who invented lobbying as we know it – and who then took his talents to autocrats from Ukraine to the Philippines, and then back to the White House. And they now include an increasing number of Americans elsewhere: in law firms and consultancies, among PR specialists and former lawmakers, and even within think tanks and universities.

Many of these lobbyists have transformed into proxies for dictators and strongmen wherever they can be found. And for years, they've escaped scrutiny.

In Foreign Agents, Casey Michel shines a light on these foreign lobbyists, and all the damage and devastation they have caused in Washington and elsewhere. From Moscow to Beijing, from far-right nationalists to far-left communists, from anti-American autocrats to pro-Western authoritarians, these foreign lobbyists have helped any illiberal, anti-democratic government they can find. And after decades of success in installing dictator after dictator, and in tilting American policy in the process, some of these lobbyists have now begun trying to end America's democratic experiment, once and for all.

Casey Michel is an author, journalist, and director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program with the Human Rights Foundation. He is the author of American Kleptocracy, named by The Economist as one of the 'best books to read to understand financial crime.' His writing on offshoring, foreign lobbying, authoritarianism, and illicit wealth has appeared in Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and The Washington Post, among other outlets, and he has appeared on NPR, BBC, CNN, and MSNBC, among other stations. He has also testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the links between illicit financial networks and national security. He received his Master's degree in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Columbia University's Harriman Institute, and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in northern Kazakhstan. Foreign Agents is his second book.

God's Own Gentlewoman (Paperback)

The Life of Margaret Paston

Diane Watt

The remarkable story of Margaret Paston, whose letters form the most extensive collection of personal writings by a medieval English woman.

Drawing on the largest archive of medieval correspondence relating to a single family in the UK, God's Own Gentlewoman explores what everyday life was like during the turbulent decades at the height of the Wars of the Roses. Covering topics including political conflicts and familial in-fighting, forbidden love affairs and clandestine marriages, bloody battles and sieges, fear of plague and sudden death, friendships and animosity, and childbirth and child mortality, Margaret's letters provide us with unparalleled insight into all aspects of life in late medieval England.

Diane Watt, a world expert on medieval women's writing, offers insight into Margaret's activities, experiences, emotions and relationships, presenting the life of a medieval woman who was at times absorbed by the mundane and domestic, but who found herself caught up in the most extraordinary situations and events.

Diane Watt is an award-winning academic and writer. She is the author of Secretaries of God, Medieval Women's Writing, and Women, Writing and Religion. Diane was born and brought up on the west coast of Scotland, and as a child spent her holidays visiting her grandmother in County Durham and aunts and cousins in North Yorkshire. More recently, during the university vacations, she has enjoyed travelling around Norfolk with her wife and their three dogs in search of Margaret Paston.

The African Emperor (Hardback)

The Life of Septimius Severus

Simon Elliott

Septimius Severus was Rome's black emperor. Born in the blistering heat of a North African spring in Leptis Magna AD 145, he died in the freezing cold of a northern British winter in York in AD 211. A giant of an emperor, whose career can be counted in superlatives, Severus was in power at the height of Rome's might. He led the largest army to ever campaign in Britain, comprising 50,000 men, part of a Roman military establishment which peaked at 33 legions under his rule.

Born into the richest family, in the richest part of the Roman Empire, Severus monumentalised his rule across the empire. He visited – and often fought in – every region. Where he did, he left a mighty legacy in the built environment, for example in Rome where much of the Forum Romanum and most of the imperial palaces are Severan. In North Africa, his hometown of Leptis Magna is all Severan, as are the Roman cities at the Atlas mountains. In London, the land walls that still define the City's Square Mile were delineated under his rule. Visitors to the under croft at York Minster can stand where he died.

Septimius Severus was one of the greatest warrior emperors, a hard man who almost died in battle several times and whose attitude is reflected in his deathbed advice to two sons: 'Be of one mind with your family, enrich the soldiers, and despise the rest.'

Simon Elliott is a historian, archaeologist, author and broadcaster based in Kent. He has worked with outlets as varied as History Hit and Channel 5 and has published several books exploring Roman history.

To Catch a Spy (Paperback)

How the Spycatcher Affair Brought MI5 in from the Cold

Tim Tate

The Spycatcher affair remains one of the most intriguing moments in the history of British intelligence and a pivotal point in the public's relationship with the murky world of espionage and security. It lifted the lid on alleged Soviet infiltration of British services and revealed a culture of law-breaking, bugging and burgling. But how much do we know about the story behind the scandal?

In To Catch a Spy, Tim Tate reveals the astonishing true story of the British government's attempts to silence whistleblower Peter Wright and hide the truth about Britain's intelligence services and political elites. It's a story of state-sanctioned cover-up plots; of the government lying to Parliament and courts around the world; and of stories leaked with the intention to mislead and deceive.

This is a tale of high treason and low farce. Drawing on thousands of pages of previously unpublished court transcripts, the contents of secret British government files, and original interviews with many of the key players in the Spycatcher trials, it draws back the curtain on a hidden world. A world where spies, politicians and Britain's most senior civil servants conspired to ride roughshod over the law, prevented the public from hearing about their actions and mounted a cynical conspiracy to deceive the world. It is the story of Peter Wright's ruthless and often lawless obsession to uncover Russian spies, both real and imagined, his belated determination to reveal the truth and the lengths to which the British government would go to silence him.

Tim Tate is a multi-award-winning documentary film-maker, investigative journalist and best-selling author. Over a career spanning 45 years he has written for most national newspapers and made more than 80 documentaries for British and international broadcasters. His films have been honoured by Amnesty International, the Royal Television Society, UNESCO, the International Documentary Association, the Association for International Broadcasting, the [US] National Academy of Cable Broadcasting and the New York Festivals.

He is the author of 18 published non-fiction books. His most recent work, The Spy Who Was Left Out In The Cold (Transworld, UK/St Martin's Press, US) uncovered the secret history of Cold War superspy Michał Goleniewski. Hitler's British Traitors (Icon Books) revealed the untold story of espionage, sabotage and treachery by pro-Nazi British fascists during the Second World War. It was selected as Book of The Week by The Times. His 2018 book Hitler's Forgotten Children (Elliott & Thompson), which told the story of the Nazi Lebensborn program through the life of one of its victims, Ingrid von Oelhafen, has been translated into twelve languages and published in 16 countries. Tim is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

The Wireless Operator (Hardback)

The Untold Story of the British Sailor Who Invented the Modern Drug Trade

David Tuch

Government agencies and rival factions were closing in. His look-alike had already fallen victim to professional hitmen and his once-powerful allies in Cuban intelligence and the DEA could no longer guarantee his safety. How did a boy from Manchester revolutionise the criminal world and become the largest marijuana trafficker in American history?

This is the never-before-told story of Harold Derber, the debonair British Merchant Navy veteran who invented the modern drug trade with his groundbreaking invention: the drug mothership. Through his ghost fleet of drug ships, Derber eventually become the chief supplier of marijuana to post-war America. This gripping true tale follows Derber from humble beginnings in Manchester, England to his assassination in the sun-kissed streets of Miami. Along the way, Derber's story takes in some of the most significant events of the twentieth century – the Second World War's Battle of the Atlantic, the Cuban Revolution and the murky shadows of the Cold War.

Shedding light on a litany of plots including arms and refugee smuggling, large-scale stock fraud and Derber's rise to the pinnacle of the drug world, this remarkable transatlantic story paints a complex picture of a singular figure and brings his extraordinary life into focus for the first time.

David Tuch is the cousin of Harold Derber. A technology entrepreneur, he was born in New York and received his doctorate from MIT and Harvard Medical School. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with his wife and four children. This is his first book.

The Vagina Business (Paperback)

The Innovative Breakthroughs that Could Change Everything in Women's Health

Marina Gerner

Marina Gerner is an award-winning financial journalist and columnist. Her work has been published in The Economist, Wall Street Journal, The Times, Financial Times, the Guardian, and Wired.

She is an adjunct professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and has a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Her ideas and research for this book have been awarded grants from the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and The Society of Authors.

She was born in Kyiv, has lived in Frankfurt and New York, and is based in London.

‘Fascinating, infuriating and exciting’ Sophie Walker, activist and author of Five Rules for Rebellion

From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads (Hardback)

A Bowie Odyssey

James Briggs

James Briggs had never known what David Bowie's Life on Mars? meant. And twenty-five years later with a career stealing his soul, a relationship in stasis and a hairline in furious retreat, life on earth had him cornered.

So when a lightning bolt of inspiration strikes, he leaves everything behind to cycle one of the song's lyrics, 'From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads' to discover what life, love and Life on Mars? really mean.

What followed was life-affirming, inspirational and often hilarious. Criss-crossing Europe, he visited French chateaus where Bowie recorded, Spanish Olympic stadiums he played, former communist states where his music was banned, and the Berlin Wall he helped topple – all while navigating angry Soviet ballerinas, suspicious village mayors, and an irate Cliff Richard fan.

James found kindred spirits and a new love (and occasionally hatred) for cycling as he discovered what happens when, instead of following the crowd, you follow the lyrics and music of the greatest artist of the 20th century. As the world reconsiders its priorities, From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads is a clarion call to embrace the strange, blaze your own path, and live as fearlessly as the Starman himself.

James Briggs is a writer specialising in music and travel who has worked for the Guardian, the Irish Times and various travel magazines. A lifelong David Bowie fan, From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads is his first book. Originally from Somerset, he is now based in London.

A Very British Cult (Paperback)

Rogue Priests and the Abode of Love

Stuart Flinders

A secluded country house. A rogue Anglican priest. Ceremonial sex and mislaid fortunes.

This is the almost-forgotten story of Victorian Britain's strangest religious sect and its wealthy, mostly female, followers who believed they could ascend directly to heaven. Henry James Prince was a rogue Anglican priest with a flare for the dramatic, and the founder of the Agapemone, or 'Abode of Love'. He also claimed to be the immortal conduit of the Holy Spirit and purportedly engaged in free love and ceremonial sex with his female followers. But Prince's eventual death didn't mark the end of this strange sect… he was promptly replaced by another: John Hugh Smyth-Pigott – otherwise known as the Clapton Messiah.

The Abode transformed a sleepy, rural corner of Somerset into one of England's most notorious locations. While the followers shut themselves away and waited patiently for the end of the world, outrage grew – the word 'Agapemone' became a byword for licentiousness or idleness, used by Charles Dickens and Ford Madox Ford. The reclusive Clapton Messiah became a fixture in the nation's papers, with frenzied efforts to discredit the organisation and undermine its leader. And still the cult grew.

Expertly drawing on primary sources to tell the story of the Agapemonites in details for the first time, Stuart Flinders shines a light on the people drawn to the cult – the forced marriages; the swindled fortunes; the women condemned to asylums; and those who managed to escape from the Abode. It is also the story of two extraordinary men, whose claims of divinity were at the heart of this very British cult.

Stuart Flinders has been a journalist for nearly four decades, with his work involving BBC News, fronting Radio 4's You and Yours for many years, and presenting live concerts on Radio 3. He also writes, and is the author of Cult of a Dark Hero: Nicholson of Delhi.

The Baton and the Cross (Paperback)

Russia's Church from Pagans to Putin

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2025*
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE PUSHKIN HOUSE BOOK PRIZE 2025*

*’A TIMELY AND IMPORTANT BOOK’ – ORLANDO FIGES*
*’SPELLBINDING’ – ANDREI KURKOV*
*ONE OF HISTORY TODAY’S BEST BOOKS OF 2024*

For more than a millennium, the Russian Orthodox Church has shown astonishing survival skills – from the Mongol yoke to tsarist demagoguery and enlightenment, from Soviet atheism to the chaotic 1990s. Now again, it is at the right hand of power, sanctifying Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

In this provocative new book, Lucy Ash reveals how, under Putin, religion is being stripped of its spiritual content and used as a weapon to control the population. Orthodox clerics and their acolytes distort theology as they preach Slav Christian supremacy and drag Russia backwards into a new Middle Ages.

Combining historical research with vivid present-day reportage, The Baton and the Cross explores the impact the Church is having on millions of lives – from the tower blocks of big cities to far-flung villages in Siberia. Delving into the underbelly of politics, state security and big money, Ash shows how these forces have formed an unholy alliance with Orthodoxy in the dystopia of twenty-first century Russia.

Lucy Ash is an award-winning presenter of radio and TV documentaries. An expert on Russia and post-Soviet countries she was first sent to Moscow by the BBC in 1990 and has been covering the region’s social, political, and cultural issues ever since. The Baton and the Cross is her first book.

How to Rob the Bank of England (Paperback)

Keith Cheeseman Reveals the True Story of Britain’s Biggest Ever Robbery

Keith Cheeseman

Clifford Thurlow

Traitor's Odyssey (Paperback)

The Untold Story of Martha Dodd and a Strange Saga of Soviet Espionage

Brendan McNally

'A delicious, gossipy and thoroughly engaging romp … heartily recommended.' Tim Tate, author of Hitler's British Traitors and The Spy Who Was Left Out in the Cold

Ambassador's daughter, Nazi love interest, Soviet spy, FBI most wanted.

Accompanying her parents to Berlin in the 1930s, Martha Dodd knew almost nothing about Adolf Hitler or the Nazis. Yet almost overnight, she stepped into the spotlight, and found herself at the over-heated centre of Hitler's 'New Germany', befriending and dating several high-ranking Nazis, including the head of the Gestapo.

An affair with a dashing Russian diplomat saw her recruited as a spy, and so began a long and tumultuous career in both Berlin and America, including attempts to infiltrate First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's inner circle and playing a key role in Henry Wallace's disastrous 1948 presidential campaign.

Betrayed by a Hollywood-hustler-turned-double-agent, Martha spent years under deep FBI surveillance – escaping twice – and went to ground in Cold War Prague, sad, lonely, rich and bored, living out her final decades in a Communist Sunset Boulevard.

Largely forgotten, Martha Dodd began to emerge as an iconic historical figure in the early 2000s. While her scandalous behaviour and pro-Soviet leanings were never much in dispute, the actual matter of her guilt remained unresolved. Now, using recently released KGB archived information and FBI files, author and journalist Brendan McNally sets the record straight in Traitor's Odyssey, telling the full epic tale of Martha Dodd's life for the first time, casting her in a new and bright light.

Brendan McNally is a journalist who has covered defence, security and intelligence issues since the late 1980s. He cut his teeth covering the Pentagon and Capitol Hill for industry newsletters. Following the 1991 Gulf War, Brendan moved to Prague where he reported for Defense News and The Prague Post. He divides his time between Dallas and the Czech Republic.