Red fortress - Catherine Merridale

The extraordinary story of the Kremlin, from prize-winning author and historian Catherine Merridale

Both beautiful and profoundly menacing, the Kremlin has dominated Moscow for many centuries. Behind its great red walls and towers many of the most startling events in Russia's history have been acted out. It is both a real place and an imaginative idea; a shorthand for a certain kind of secretive power, but also the heart of a specific Russian authenticity.

Catherine Merridale's exceptional new book revels in both the drama of the Kremlin and its sheer unexpectedness: an impregnable fortress which has repeatedly been devastated, a symbol of all that is Russian substantially created by Italians. The Kremlin is one of the very few buildings in the world which still keeps its original, late medieval function: as a palace, built to intimidate the ruler's subjects and to frighten foreign emissaries. Red Fortress brilliantly conveys this sense of the Kremlin as a stage set, nearly as potent under Vladimir Putin as it was under earlier, far more baleful inhabitants.

Praise for Ivan's War:

'A marvellous book ... Catherine Merridale is a superb historian, among the very best of her generation' Tony Judt

'Essential reading, not just for those interested in the Eastern Front, but for anyone who wants to understand Russia'
Antony Beevor, Sunday Times

'A harrowing but unforgettable report on the chaos and tragedy that brought this Europe to birth ... Magnificent' Boyd Tonkin, Independent

'Outstanding' Simon Sebag Montefiore

About the author:

Catherine Merridale is the author of Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin, Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia, which won the Heinemann Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and Ivan's War: The Red Army, 1939-45. She is Professor of Contemporary History at Queen Mary, University of London.