RIDDLE, MYSTERY AND ENIGMA

'Two Hundred Years of British-Russian Relations', the book includes updated chapters on Putin's Russia and the future after the Russia-Ukraine war. Britain's relationship with Russia is surprisingly under-explored. When the two formed a pragmatic alliance and fought together at Navarino in 1827, it was overwhelmingly the work of the British Prime Minister George Canning. His death brought about a volte-face that would see the countries fighting on opposing sides in the Crimean War and jostling for power during the Great Game. It was not until the 1917 Revolution that another statesman had a defining impact on relations between Britain and Russia. Winston Churchill opposed Bolshevism, yet he never stopped advocating diplomatic and military engagement with Russia. In the Second World War he recognised earlier than most the necessity of allying with the Soviets against the menace of Nazi Germany, as well as the post-war threat to freedom posed by the Soviets themselves. Bringing us into the 21st century, David Owen chronicles how both countries have responded to their geopolitical decline. He draws on British imperial and Soviet history and explains the unique nature of Putin's autocracy and addresses Britain's return to 'blue water' diplomacy. 'Any book on Anglo-Russian relations by our finest living foreign secretary would be interesting enough, but one written with verve and insight by so fine an historian as David Owen marks a major publishing event... Owen weaves in the near-past such as his own protest against the Soviet invasion of Hungary of 1956, and takes us up to the present day with the noble heroism of Alexei Navalny.' He depicts a relationship governed by principle as often as by suspicion, expediency and outright necessity. 468pp, paperback with Index.