Oleg Gordievsky

Under Siege

Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War

By

Profile Books 446pp £20 order from our bookshop

Sir Rodric Braithwaite had already served as a diplomat in Moscow before becoming the British Ambassador there at the end of the 1980s. In the Foreign and Commonwealth Office there is a well-known expression – ‘to go native’ – used in connection with those of its own employees (as well as journalists and intelligence officers) who have so fallen in love with the country where they are stationed that they then find it very difficult to distinguish between the interests of that country and the interests of their own. 

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • RT : A magnificent demolition job on this "acid laced tirade...unpleasantly self-obsessed...self pitying polemic...book… ,
    • 'Seventy years on, the time we have left to gather such first-hand testimony is running out.' John Keay on the sig… ,
    • The author 'seethes with contemptuous indignation at the shiny junk that an unregulated construction industry dumps… ,
    • 'The physical courage he demonstrated as a young man [...] gave way to intellectual power; radical thought, gifted… ,
    • 'While Jane Austen didn’t perhaps achieve the full recognition that she deserved in her lifetime, even then she out… ,
    • 'All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And t… ,
    • 'You are interested in a particular subject; basic research hardens this interest into an obsession, after which th… ,
    Follow Us