A Very Expensive Poison: The Definitive Story of the Murder of Litvinenko and Russia's War with the West

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Harding also, as seen in the book’s subtitle, documents this as just one act in a continuing push by Putin to make Russia as dominant on the world stage as the USSR while still treating the country as a piggy bank. Those sanctions that the world has placed on Russia are woefully inadequate half-measures, but there have been calls for even those sanctions to be reversed, most recently by Italy’s newly elected populist government. Putin has cultivated many friends among Europe’s far-right and far-left parties, and the recent success of these parties across Europe has no doubt brought some warmth to his icy heart. Importance, for Prebble, is about portents. She was sent Harding’s book to read at the beginning of 2017. The Salisbury poisonings hadn’t happened yet, but Trump had just come to power. Her excitement about writing the play boiled down to the sense that “there was something in the present that I felt was explained by this story”. Alexander Litvinenko solved the crime of his murder as he was dying from poisoning and it took the British government another 10 years to confirm it. Luke Harding takes you through the crime and the issues that surround it. You see how those who fall out of favor with Vladimir Putin are never safe. A few things helped her through that period, she says. One was friendship. She talks very warmly about her closeness to Billie Piper, the actress with whom she first worked on the ITV adaptation of The Secret Diary of a Call Girl – a difficult TV baptism for both of them. Piper also later starred in The Effect.

A Very Expensive Poison” showcases investigative journalism at its best. So good were Harding’s investigative skills, that it prompted break-ins to his Moscow-based apartment – an eerie and grippingly paranoid part of the book. You can’t help but start looking at your food, drinks, phone reception in different ways while reading this! Based on Luke Harding's gripping novel of the scandalous events behind the death of Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, t he world premiere of Lucy Prebble's A Very Expensive Poison is set to open at the Old Vic on 19 August2019 for a strictly limited engagement. MyAnna Buring on starring as Marina Litvinenko in A Very Expensive Poison: ‘This play has made me cry every day’ Luke Harding, an experienced Guardian journalist and the paper’s former Moscow correspondent, has long followed the story. In fact, as his previous book Mafia State makes clear, part of the reason he was banished from Russia was due to his persistent questioning of the Kremlin’s narrative. The last third of the book I found a lot less satisfying. Harding’s thesis is that the murder of Litvinenko was the first shot, if you will, of covert conflict with the west. Indeed, the subheading of the book is “the definitive story of the murder of Litvinenko and Russia’s War with the West.” In support of this premise, he widens his analysis to include other suspicious deaths of Russian dissidents, Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and the conflict in the Ukraine. While this is valid up to a point, I felt that these are big subjects in and of themselves, and that this section was let down by the necessary brevity he had to treat them with.

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Harding lays out every fact connecting it in thrillerish detail to the dark undercurrents of life in today’s Russia.”– Oliver Bullough, author of The Last Man in Russia Those at the top did not plan it well. While they found two unassuming motiveless assassins, Andrei Lugovoi and Dimity Kovton knew little of their tradecraft. The descriptions of how they dressed, attempted to get laid, and sought an accomplice are comical. Did the planners know that polomium 210, while hard to detect in a body, leaves a larger external trail, one that could possibly put thousands at risk? It doesn’t matter that the planners were careless, with the power of the “country” they control and their wealth, consequences are unlikely. They publically awarded the assassins with honors. Harding also puts into perspective the annexation of Crimea and the Russian pseudo-invasion of the Donbas in 2014, which also puts into perspective the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, six years after it was published.

The notorious death in question took place in November 2006, where journalist and Russian dissisdent Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London. His subsequent death 22 days later revealed he was subject to Polonium – a rare, lethal and highly radioactive substance.

A Very Expensive Poison is an extensively researched, nuanced and well written account of the extraordinary murder of Alexander Litvinenko by Russian agents – authorised by Vlad the Invader (that’s Putin, of course). For more information about Lucy Prebble's first new play in seven years, read our blog on the Top 7 Facts You Should Know About A Very Expensive Poison at The Old Vic. The true story of Alexander Litvinenko Having read Mr Harding's later book Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russia’s Remaking of the West this follows a similar theme with pacey writing whilst retaining believability based on the official documents, open sources and interviews he conducted.

This was polonium, a rare and highly radioactive substance. It is probably the most toxic substance known to man when swallowed or inhaled-more than 100 billion times more deadly than hydrogen cyanide.”The Litvinenko story is many things: a horror story from the cold war transplanted to 21st-century London, a parable of Russia’s dark return to authoritarianism, a tale of Jacobean revenge, gruesomely done. It is also a human drama. It is about love and loss. At its centre is Marina Litvinenko – a woman trying to navigate her way to the truth, across a treacherous sea of lies and temporising. I also felt Harding overextended himself here. I am no supporter or apologist for Putin, his autocratic rule is obvious enough and Harding achieves nothing if not convincingly laying the murder of Litvinenko and others at his door. But while Russia’s aggression in the Ukraine is beyond doubt, is it really inconceivable that the West wasn’t whiter than white in the conflict? There is an argument to be had that America’s support for NGOs in the region is not as benign as the Washington establishment might have us believe and I don’t feel it unreasonable to question the narrative that Russian fears are completely without foundation. Harding is equally dismissive of Russia’s involvement in Syria, but again, one doesn’t have to be in the Putin fan club to ask why? While it is beyond doubt that Assad is a nasty tyrant and that Russian airstrikes have been aimed at the Free Syrian Army as well as more radical jihadist groups, it is also perfectly reasonable to point out that Russia has shown more leadership than the UK and US combined. Can we really fault the Russian bear for liberating Palmyra from ISIS? Award-winning playwright and writer of the wildly popular series Secret Diary of a Call Girl Lucy Prebbletells of the notorious assassination of Alexander Litvinenko. Based on Guardian journalist Luke Harding’s book of the same name, A Very Expensive Poison brings a world of whistleblowing, defection, espionage, revenge and politics to the Off-West End stage. Impassioned…Harding paints deft portraits of the tragi-comic duo suspected of carrying out the crime.” – The New Statesman

These two men left a radioactive trail around London, as they made various bungled attempts to kill the man who considered them as, if not friends, acquaintances. His need to make a living in his new country made Alexander Litvinenko careless. If the authorities had considered his fears of being killed more seriously, possibly he would not have been in the position where he was forced to let his guard down. We must also consider the two men who the author says carried out the poisoning; Andrei Lugovoi and Dimitry Kovtun, who are accused in this book of not only killing a man, but who glibly poured this extremely dangerous substance down various hotel sinks and could possibly have caused a major health disaster (at one point, one of the men even told his young son to shake Litvinenko’s hand, aware that he had just touched the poison). On a whirlwind journey from Moscow to Mayfair, it follows Litvinenko as he investigates his own death, and his wife Marina’s quest for justice, in the face of Russian corruption and British vacillation. While I applaud the author’s willingness to engage with his readers, it would have been much better had Harding explained this in greater depth in the book itself. For while it appears that Lugovoi and Kovtun had no idea of exactly what they were carrying, the knowledge of how polonium might be “safe” under certain circumstances helps to explain one peculiar aspect of the case. Just after successfully poisoning Litvinenko’s tea, Lugovoi called his oThere are many takeaways. One is awe for the very brave men and women in Russia who pursue reform through the media, politics and the courts. In the US these can be career or commitment pursuits, in Russia they are life and death undertakings. Another is how Russian money acts like a drug on policy makers and politicians in the west. Exactly. So at the end of this – and it sounds wanky obviously – I wanted to make the point that we are all a bit responsible for the society we have created. ‘Oh dearism’ – that refrain that everything is bad and none of it is our fault – that is exactly what those in power want.” In her glowing first production as artistic director of the Lyric Hammersmith Rachel O’Riordan has made Tanika Gupta’s new adaptation of A Doll’s House work in an almost entirely unexpected way. Forget Munch screams, bleached light, stealth, darkness, upholstery. Replace with a rosy-lit courtyard, a banana tree, monkeys and a live thrum of harmonium, lute and dholak drum: Lily Arnold and Kevin Treacy design the set and lighting; Arun Ghosh plays his own compositions.