Nikolai Tolstoy

Mr. Todhunter lived an ordinary life in an ordinary bachelor's flat in London. He took tea at the same time every day and his habits were totally predictable. Until he learned he had only months to live—and decided to make one dramatic last gesture...to rid the world of the worst person he could find. But once the deed was done, something quite unpredictable happened. An innocent man was convicted of the crime, and it was up to Mr. Todhunter to prove himself guilty of murder.

In May 1945, as World War II drew to a close in Europe, some 30,000 Russian Cossacks surrendered to British forces in Austria, believing they would be spared repatriation to the Soviet Union. The fate of those among them who were Soviet citizens had been sealed by the Yalta Agreement, signed by the Allied leaders a few months earlier. Ever since, mystery has surrounded Britain's decision to include among those returned to Stalin a substantial number of White Russians, who had fled their country after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and found refuge in various European countries. They had never been Soviet citizens, and should not have been handed over. Some were prominent tsarist generals, on whose handover the Soviets were particularly insistent. General Charles Keightley, the responsible British officer, concealed the presence of White Russians from his superiors, who had issued repeated orders stipulating that only Soviet nationals should be handed over, and even then only if they did not resist. Through a succession underhanded moves, Keightley secretly delivered up the leading Cossack commanders to the Soviets, while force of unparalleled brutality was employed to hand over thousands of Cossack men, women, and children to a ghastly fate. Particularly sinister was the role of the future British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, whose own machinations are scrutinized here. Following the publication of Count Nikolai Tolstoy's last book on the subject in 1986, the British government closed ranks, and three years later an English court issued a £1,500,000 judgment against him for allegedly libeling the British chief of staff who issued the fatal orders. Since then, however, Count Tolstoy has gradually acquired a devastating body of heretofore unrevealed evidence filling the remaining gaps in this tragic history. - publisher

"Stonehenge presents us with one of the greatest archaeological mysteries from pre-history. With each new breakthrough in field research and technological innovation, the full scale and significance of the ancient site only deepens. In this new magisterial study by Nikolai Tolstoy, an essentially historical approach is used to try and explain the human story behind the implacable stones, and to enliven our understanding of Stonehenge through the fragments of myth and ritual that survive through Britain's oral tradition. With years of patient study and an acquired fluency with the island's many ancient languages, Tolstoy excavates a new theory from the layers of cultural sediment. Whilst admitting the latest archaeological evidence and research, Tolstoy aims to reconstruct the significant aspects of British pagan ideology and thinking from the pre-Roman era. By exploring the myths and rituals passed down alongside the material remnants of this lost civilization, Stonehenge becomes illumined as the 'sacred centre' of Britain, the holy site at which the ancient peoples' most profound beliefs – in the birth, destruction, and eventual rebirth of their island itself – were celebrated."--Publisher information.