DR LYUBA VINOGRADOVA was born in Moscow and graduated from the Moscow Agricultural Academy with a PhD in microbiology. In 1995 she was introduced to Antony Beevor and helped him research Stalingrad. Since then she has worked on many other research projects, and is the co-author (with Beevor) of A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army. Her book about Russian women fighter pilots, Defending the Motherland, was published by MacLehose Press in 2015.

DR ARCH TAIT has translated many of the leading Russian writers of today, notably the late Anna Politkovskaya. For her book Putin’s Russia he was awarded the PEN Literature in Translation Prize.