Book description
On 7 December 2006, in a Highgate Cemetery drenched with London rain, a
Russian was buried within a stone’s throw of the grave of Karl Marx. He
was Alexander Litvinenko, Sasha to his friends, a boy from the deep
Russian provinces who rose through the ranks of the world’s most feared
security service. Litvinenko was the man who denounced murder and
corruption in the Russian government, fled from the wrath of the
Kremlin, came to London and took the shilling of Moscow’s avowed enemy
... Now he was a martyr, condemned by foes unknown to an agonised death
in a hospital bed thousands of miles from home.
Martin Sixsmith draws on his long experience as the BBC’s Moscow
correspondent, and contact with key London-based Russians, to dissect
Alexander Litvinenko’s murder. Myriad theories have been put forward
since he died, but the story goes back to 2000 when hostilities were
declared between the Kremlin and its political opponents. This is a war
that has blown hot and cold for over seven years; a war that has pitted
some of Russia’s strongest, richest men against the most powerful
president Russia has had since Josef Stalin.
The Litvinenko File
is a gripping, powerful inside account of a shocking act of murder,
when Russia’s war with itself spilled over onto the streets of London
and made the world take notice. Martin Sixsmith was born in Cheshire
and educated at Oxford, Harvard and the Sorbonne. From 1980 to 1997 he
worked for the BBC as the Corporation’s correspondent in Moscow,
Washington, Brussels and Warsaw. From 1997 to 2002 he worked for the
British Government as Director of Communications. He is now a writer,
presenter and journalist. His previous books are Moscow Coup: The
Death of the Soviet System
and two novels, Spin
and I Heard Lenin Laugh
.
