CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Timely reminder of co-operation between Britain and the USSR against a common enemy in WWII
COLIN TURBETT, author of a new book on the Anglo-Soviet Alliance against Nazism, explains its ongoing significance as its 80th anniversary is marked
Aboard HMS Sheffield during an Arctic Convoy escort patrol, December 1941
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
WITHOUT warning on June 22 1941, the invading forces of Nazi Germany poured across the Soviet border into Ukraine and Byelorussia and then into western Russia.
Despite a heroic defence, Soviet forces were initially overwhelmed and Hitler looked forward to an easy victory. Britain at that point stood almost alone, enjoying US lend-lease assistance — often involving redundant and outdated equipment — but with no ally of substance on the military front.
Recognising an opportunity, prime minister Winston Churchill immediately made overtures to the USSR that were gradually formalised into an alliance of huge importance for the successful outcome of the war.
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