Steven Richmond – författare

In the time of the 'Great Powers', Stratford Canning served as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during several long missions throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Drafted into diplomacy by his older cousin and mentor, the statesman George Canning, Stratford arrived in the Ottoman capital at the age of 22 in January 1809, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars. He concluded his final mission there in October 1858, more than two years after the end of the Crimean War. His name became synonymous across Europe with the so-called Eastern Question, the imperial contest between the Powers for leverage in the Levant. Canning was a prominent figure in major diplomatic episoes of the period, including the crucial peace-treaty reached by the Ottomans and Russians in late May 1812, only weeks before Napoleon's invasion of Russia; the war of Greek independence in the 1820s and the negotiation of an independent Greek state in 1832; and the preliminaries of the Crimean War in 1853.He witnessed and documented dramatic moments of Ottoman politics, such as the Vaka-i Hayriye or 'Auspicious Event'- the elimination of the ancient elite palace guards, the Janissaries, by Sultan Mahmud II in June 1826. For decades Canning supported the Ottoman reform movement, and he played a role in developments preceding Sultan Abdulmecit's abolition of capital punishment for apostasy from Islam in March 1844. In The Voice of England in the East, Steven Richmond reconstructs the imperial objectives and diplomatic pratices of the period; and depicts the characters, customs and scenes of Konstantniyye, Ottoman Constantinople. Based upon Canning's personal archive, British and Ottoman diplomatic records, newspaper accounts, correspondence and memoirs, the result is an original study of East-West relations and a novel portrait of empire at the dawn of the industrial era.

In the age of the Great Powers, with Russia and France at war, and the Ottoman Empire at the height of its influence and majesty, the British diplomat Stratford Canning arrived in Constantinople. The cousin of George Canning, he would be Britain's representative in the power politics of the Middle East for almost two decades, and was instrumental in the events which led up to the Crimean War and the events surrounding the 'eastern question' of the nineteenth century. In The Voice of England in the East, Steven Richmond reconstructs the diplomatic priorities of the period through the private papers and letters of a key British statesman, comparing them with Ottoman accounts written in the Sultan's court for the first time. The result is a new analytical history of the late Ottoman Empire, British diplomacy in the era of Palmerston and the reality of politics in the 'great game' of the nineteenth century

Lenin was an unambiguous supporter of total censorship and control of culture, while, interestingly, a young Stalin defended Bulgakov against charges of 'bourgeois' leanings. By charting the direction of theatre, literature and the Bolshevik leadership in this period, Steven Richmond provides a fascinating history of cultural life in communist Russia - and an insight into the character of totalitarianism itself. Essential reading for students and scholars of twentieth century social, literary and cultural history, this will become one of the key works on censorship in the early Soviet Union.