RED HOTEL: Moscow 1941, The Metropol Hotel

Veteran reporter Philps, who knew Moscow firsthand in the last years of Communism, tells the often horrifying tale of moral degradation and occasional heroism, making the shiniest stars in the book the female fixers who were controlled by the Secret Police but managed against the odds to retain a modicum of their integrity. It is the untold history of Moscow's Metropol hotel, a fervent spot of intrigue and secrets, and the centre of Stalin's nefarious propaganda during World War Two. At Churchill's insistence, Stalin had accepted an Anglo-American press corps in Moscow to cover the Eastern Front. To turn these reporters into Kremlin mouthpieces, Stalin imposed the most draconian controls - unbending censorship, no visits to the battle front, and a ban on contact with ordinary citizens. The Red Hotel explores this gilded cage where the press corps enjoyed lavish supplies of caviar and had their choice of young women to employ as translators and share their beds. This regime served Stalin well. His plans to control Eastern Europe as a Sovietised 'outer empire' were never reported, and the most outrageous Soviet lies went unchallenged. Philps conveys Nadya Ulanovskaya's story in stirring detail, both her improbable adventures before World War Two, and the ordeals she experienced in the Gulag serving a punishing sentence. Using British archives and Soviet sources, the unique role of the women of the Metropol, both as consummate propagandists and secret dissenters, is told here for the very first time. From the weaponisation of disinformation to the falsification of history, the story mirrors the struggles of our own modern era. 451pp, eight pages of photos.