Will I love Stalin’s Secret War?

Nikolai Tolstoy (from the Russian royal dynasty) a british MP, produced this book many years ago. A book I had always wished to read but that had sat at the bottom of my "TBR"bundle for many years. I suppose I was putting it off as it was going to be horrible for someone from the relatively modern age to understand. Having read months of wonderful fiction my conciense was pricking me and it was time to read something far more important. So I embarked on this book. It is not an easy read, but I would recommend it as you… show more.

This book is the one exception to my rule about access to Soviet documents. Writing at a time when he had no such access, Tolstoy nonetheless blew up the field with bold arguments deriving from sources to which he did have access, from Soviet dissident memoirs to a vast trove of material he discovered in the Public Record Office in Kew Gardens, London, in particular on the often-neglected “Phony War” period of WWII between the fall of Poland and Hitler’s invasion of France and the Low Countries – a period during which Britain and France nearly went to war with… show more.