I should have read this earlier - it was first published in 2009 but I only stumbled across a reference to it it at the end of last year and I snapped up a copy of the 2010 paperback edition from Amazon. Amazon delivered it with postage free within 24 hours in time for New Year's Eve and it made absorbing reading over the holidays.

The book is packed with insight and does not bow to the cliched stereotypes which characterize mainstream mass-media reporting on modern Russia, the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exile of Boris Berezovsky and the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Instead it details how the accepted myths about Russia are attributable to the millions of dollars spent on hostile PR by the likes of  Mr. Berezovsky and Yukos fugitive Leonid Nevzlin.

It is a breath of fresh air.

While I don't agree with all of the authors' findings it is sufficiently balanced and impartial to in my mind be reccomended reading for all with even a remote interest in Russia but mandatory for diplomats and businessmen whether entrepreneurs or multi-national executives looking to set up and do business in the country.

It gives a clear and reasoned case why London is going to be capital of choice for the movers and shakers of Russia and it is easy to extrapolate the reasoning behind that to forecast that while global economic weight is shifting from West to East the emrging market eloites will be beating an increasingly well trodden path to London.