For a start, Russia sustained a far higher rate of losses in the first world war than France, Germany or the United Kingdom. What is instantly striking is that the kind of violence we’ve witnessed on television of late has a long and depressing history in the region. The book arrives against the background of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and there are obvious echoes, not least with venues fresh from the news, such as Kharkiv, forming scenes of earlier destruction. He is, however, a wonderfully lucid writer who marshals the extensive material with great verve and understanding. The violence we’ve witnessed on television of late has a long and depressing history in the region The dimensions of his undertaking with Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921 are on a far larger and more daunting scale. The military historian Antony Beevor is best known for his books Stalingrad and Berlin, which, as their titles suggest, focused on a single location and two clearly defined sets of combatants. Not only is there a huge and shifting cast of belligerents but the action takes place across a vast terrain that stretches from Warsaw to Vladivostok, the Arctic Circle to the borders of the Ottoman empire. How they managed to place themselves in the driving seat and then hold on to power as the Russian empire folded into civil war is perhaps the most complex political and military story of the 20th century.

Stalingrad by Antony Beevor