At the age of 43, a few weeks after he secured British citizenship, former KGB and FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko was murdered: the world’s first victim of polonium 210 poisoning.  The Litvinenko killing revealed that London has quietly become not only the single greatest centre of Russian capital outside Moscow, ...read more →

How do you go about writing a book about one of the most powerful dynasties on earth? That’s the challenge special guest Russ Baker faced when he first considered writing about the Bush family; a tribe that encompasses two U.S. Senators, one Supreme Court Justice, two Governors, two Presidents and ...read more →

In the week that Microsoft bought a fifth of Barnes & Noble’s digital businesses, and we learned that e-books sales grew 360% in the UK last year, we thought at The Naked Book we’d ignore all that – and focus on ‘mummy porn’. Why?  Well, it was the public wot ...read more →

Geoff Dyer is the consummate writer’s writer: winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize, the US National Book Critics Circle Award the E. M. Forster Award, and more.  The Daily Telegraph newspaper has called him “the best living writer in Britain”.  Zadie Smith believes he is “a national treasure.” This is ...read more →

It was an iconic murder – pre-dating the mysterious death of British biological warfare expert David Kelly, but bearing uncanny similarities, too.  Rose grower, naturalist, diarist and campaigner against nuclear energy and weapons, Hilda Murrell was truly a Miss Marple character, and her murder in 1984 entered the national consciousness ...read more →

It was supposed to be “the war that will end war” – according to the misplaced optimism of British author H.G. Wells, and countless others like him who cheerfully expected “our boys” to be home by Christmas 1914.   Involving all the world’s great powers, more than 70 million combatants, and ...read more →

Tonight’s show is a real-life thriller: featuring espionage, double-dealing, murder and even a dash of Hollywood.  And a British ambassador who sees things he shouldn’t – and decides to tell the world. Sounds like the plot of a movie?  Craig Murray‘s amazing story has already been optioned by producers – ...read more →