He was born in London in 1959 and is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. He became known with Pesant Russia. Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution (1917-1921). With The Russian Revolution 1891-1924. The tragedy of a town, translated into a dozen languages, won the famous NCR award, the Wolfson History Award, the W.H. Smith Literary Award, and was voted Best Book of the Year by the prestigious History Today magazine and the Los Angeles Times. His next play was The Dance of Natacha. A cultural history of Russia, a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and has subsequently published The Whispering Ones. The repression in Stalin's Russia and recently Crimea. His work has been translated into more than fifteen languages.