In 2007 Luke Harding arrived in Moscow to take up a new job as a correspondent for the Guardian. In 2011 he became the first Western reporter to be deported from Russia since the days of the Cold War when the Kremlin ordered his expulsion. His book Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia tells the story. He is joined by Martin Sixsmith, the BBC’s former Moscow correspondent and the author of Russia: A 1,000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East. Sixsmith tells Russia’s full and fascinating story, from its foundation in the last years of the tenth century to the first years of the twenty-first, skilfully tracing the conundrums of modern Russia to their roots in its troubled past. Covering politics, music, literature and art, he explores the myths Russians have created from their history, and explains the nation’s seemingly split personality as the result of influences that have divided it for centuries.