Robert Service is a Fellow of the British Academy and of St Antony's College, Oxford. He has written several books, including the highly acclaimed Lenin: A Biography, Russia: Experiment with a People, Stalin: A Biography and Comrades: A History of World Communism, as well as many other books on Russia's past and present including Kremlin Winter: Russia and the Second Coming of Vladimir Putin. Trotsky: A Biography was awarded the 2009 Duff Cooper Prize. Married with four children, he lives in London.
Service is too good a historian to attempt to string Putin's actions into a coherent strategy. Rather, he offers a portrait of a leader cobbling together response to a series of crisis. -- Owen Matthews * Times Literary Supplement * [A] Nuanced account of Putin in power -- Victor Sebestyen * Financial Times * A masterful portrait of Putin and Russia -- Jack Coleman * Daily Telegraph * Substantial, well-documented . . . One of our most accomplished, erudite and prolific historians of modern Russia. -- Rodric Braithwaite * New Statesman * The book has many qualities, not least in ambitious breadth, covering domestic politics, foreign policy, economics and military matters . . . makes for comprehensive introductory reading for those new to the subject. And in the way of any good book, it will be provocative for those already well versed in it. * Literary Review * Robert Service, our pre-eminent Kremlinologist, does not offer a lot of new gossip about Putin. He does not believe in demonising the Russian leader. Rather, in a piece of superb analysis, he sets out how Putin the man was swallowed up by the machine he created. * The Times *