From one of the finest journalists of our time comes a definitive, boots-on-the-ground dispatch from the front lines of the conflict in Ukraine. “Essential for anyone who wants to understand events in Ukraine and what they portend for the West.”—The Wall Street Journal Ever since Ukraine’s violent 2014 revolution, followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the country has been at war. Misinformation reigns, more than two million people have been displaced, and Ukrainians fight one another on a second front—the crucial war against corruption. With In Wartime, Tim Judah lays bare the events that have turned neighbors against one another and mired Europe’s second-largest country in a conflict seemingly without end. In Lviv, Ukraine’s western cultural capital, mothers tend the graves of sons killed on the other side of the country. On the Maidan, the square where the protests that deposed President Yanukovych began, pamphleteers, recruiters, buskers, and mascots compete for attention. In Donetsk, civilians who cheered Russia’s President Vladimir Putin find their hopes crushed as they realize they have been trapped in the twilight zone of a frozen conflict. Judah talks to everyone from politicians to poets, pensioners, and historians. Listening to their clashing explanations, he interweaves their stories to create a sweeping, tragic portrait of a country fighting a war of independence from Russia—twenty-five years after the collapse of the USSR.

'Uproarious . . . [Phillips and Elledge] pair the abundant good humour of this book with a warning about the corrosive effects of conspiracy theories' The Times From the Satanic Panic to the anti-vaxx movement, the moon landing to Pizzagate, it's always been human nature to believe we're being lied to by the powers that be (and sometimes, to be fair, we absolutely are). But while it can be fun to indulge in a bit of Deep State banter on the group chat, recent times have shown us that some of these theories have taken on a life of their own - and in our dogged quest for the truth, it appears we might actually be doing it some damage. In Conspiracy, Tom Phillips and Jonn Elledge take us on a fascinating, insightful and often hilarious journey through conspiracy theories old and new, to try and answer a vital question for our times: how can we learn to log off the QAnon message boards, and start trusting hard evidence again? Praise for the Brief History series: 'Witty, entertaining and slightly distressing... You should probably read it' Sarah Knight, author of The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck 'Brilliant. Utterly, utterly brilliant' Jeremy Clarkson 'Very funny' Mark Watson 'Both readable and entertaining' Telegraph

It is a sweltering August in Aberystwyth. A man wearing a Soviet museum curator's uniform walks into Louie Knight's office and spins a wild and impossible tale of love, death, madness and betrayal. Sure, Louie had heard about Hughesovka, the legendary replica of Aberystwyth built in the Ukraine by some crazy nineteenth-century czar. But he hadn't believed that it really existed until he met Uncle Vanya. Now the old man's story catapults him into the neon-drenched wilderness of Aberystwyth Prom in search of a girl who mysteriously disappeared thirty years ago. Soon Louie finds his fate depending on two most unlikely talismans - a ticket to Hughesovka and a Russia cosmonaut's sock.

If people are geographical beings, what can fiction tell us about this truth? This book explores how literature can help us understand the nature of the relations between people and place, how humans create connections between their identities and their geographies, and how these can be threatened and lost. Literature is an important, if unusual, way to explore these relations. At once centred in imagination and ideas, fiction is also indelibly connected to, as well as influenced by, the geographies in which it is set. As this book argues, the relationship between fiction and location is so important that it is often difficult to know which is imagined and which is real. Exploring the relations between people and place through fiction writing set in Wales, Page and Place garners poetic insight into how places are written into our stories, and how these stories take and make the places around us. The book introduces the notion of ‘plot’ to describe the complex entanglement between fiction and geography, and to help understand the role that places play in defining human identity.