 |
Owen Matthews | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 1971 (age 52–53) |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Nationality | British |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Subject | History |
Owen Matthews (born December 1971) is a British writer, historian and journalist. His first book, Stalin's Children, was shortlisted for the 2008 Guardian First Book Award, [1] the Orwell Prize for political writing, [2] and France's Prix Médicis Etranger. [3] His books have been translated into 28 languages. He is a former Moscow and Istanbul Bureau Chief for Newsweek .
Owen Matthews was born in London in 1971. His mother Lyudmila was born in Kharkiv, Soviet Ukraine, [4] and he speaks Russian as a native speaker. Matthews's maternal grandfather, Boris Bibikov, was a Party man, a true believer in the great Bolshevik experiment which would bring about a new person, homo sovieticus. [5]
Matthews was educated at Westminster School and studied Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford. [6]
During the Bosnian War, Matthews worked as a freelance foreign correspondent in Budapest, Sarajevo and Belgrade. [6] [7] From 1995–7 he worked as a city and features reporter on The Moscow Times . In 1997 he joined Newsweek Magazine's Moscow Bureau as a correspondent, covering the Second Chechen War. In 2001 he moved to Turkey, reporting from Turkey, the Caucasus, Syria and Iran, and also covering the invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq. [6] [8] From 2006 to 2012 he was Newsweek's Moscow Bureau Chief; and until 2019 was a Contributing Editor at the magazine. [6] In 2014 he reported for Newsweek on the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. [9] He is currently a contributing writer for The Spectator Magazine. [10]
In 2013 Matthews had his first solo art show, "Impact" at the Galerie Nivet Carzon in Paris. [32] The installation centred on an impacted 9mm pistol round which Matthews picked up from a pavement in Baghdad, Iraq, next to the body of a man whom it had killed.
Matthews co-wrote the 2015 Russian television series Londongrad and played an episodic role in it. [33] Matthews also played the US Ambassador to Moscow in the 2017 Russian television series The Optimists. [34]
In 2016-18 Matthews appeared regularly as a guest on Russian political talk shows 60 Minut (Russia's top-rated talk show on Russia-1); NTV's Mesto Vstrechi and Russia-1's Evening with Vladimir Solovyov. [35] He was known for outspoken criticism of the Kremlin and his clashes with senior Russian politicians, including Vladimir Zhirinovsky. [36] [37]
Animal Farm is a beast fable, in the form of a satirical allegorical novella, by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. It tells the story of a group of anthropomorphic farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, the rebellion is betrayed and, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon, the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before.
Peter Jonathan Hitchens is an English conservative author, broadcaster, journalist, and commentator. He writes for The Mail on Sunday and was a foreign correspondent reporting from both Moscow and Washington, D.C. Peter Hitchens has contributed to The Spectator, The American Conservative, The Guardian, First Things, Prospect, and the New Statesman. His books include The Abolition of Britain, The Rage Against God, The War We Never Fought and The Phoney Victory.
Walter Duranty was an Anglo-American journalist who served as Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times for fourteen years (1922–1936) following the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1917–1923).
Orlando Guy Figes is a British historian and writer. Until his retirement, he was Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he was made Emeritus Professor on his retirement.
Donald Michael Thomas was a Cornish poet, translator, novelist, editor, biographer and playwright. His work has been translated into 30 languages.
Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore is a British historian, television presenter and author of popular history books and novels, including Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2003), Jerusalem: The Biography (2011), The Romanovs 1613–1918 (2016), and The World: A Family History of Humanity (2022), among others.
Samad Vurgun was an Azerbaijani and Soviet poet, dramatist, public figure, first People's Artist of the Azerbaijan SSR (1943), academician of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (1945), laureate of two Stalin Prizes of second degree, and member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1940.
Timothy David Snyder is an American historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
Andrew Miller is a British journalist and author, best known for his debut novel, Snowdrops, published under the name A.D. Miller. He studied literature at Cambridge and Princeton and worked in television before joining The Economist magazine as a reporter in 2000.
Oneworld Publications is a British independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Novin Doostdar and Juliet Mabey originally to publish accessible non-fiction by experts and academics for the general market. Based in London, it later added a literary fiction list and both a children's list and an upmarket crime list, and now publishes across a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, current affairs, popular science, religion, philosophy, and psychology, as well as literary fiction, crime fiction and suspense, and children's titles.
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author, translator, and activist who has been an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.
Oleg Vitalyevich Khlevniuk is a Russian historian and a senior researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow. Much of his writing on Stalinist Soviet Union is based on newly released archival documents, including personal correspondence, drafts of Central Committee paperwork, new memoirs, and interviews with former functionaries and the families of Politburo members. Gleb Pavlovsky has characterized him as a "leading Russian historian of Stalinism." He also a corresponding fellow of Royal Historical Society.
Laurie Penny is a British journalist and writer. Penny has written articles for publications including The Guardian,The New York Times and Salon. Penny is a contributing editor at the New Statesman and the author of several books on feminism, and they have also written for American television shows including The Haunting of Bly Manor and The Nevers.
Catherine Anne Merridale, FBA is a British writer and historian with a special interest in Russian history.
Adam Frost is a British author, best known for his children's books Ralph the Magic Rabbit, The Epic Book of Epicness and The Awesome Book of Space. He also designs information graphics for The Guardian, and teaches and writes on the subject.
Mikhail Viktorovich Zygar is a Russian born journalist, writer and filmmaker, and the founding editor-in-chief of Russian news channel TV Rain (2010–2015). Under Zygar's leadership, TV Rain provided an alternative to Kremlin-controlled federal TV channels by focusing on news content and giving a platform to opposition voices. The channel's coverage of politically sensitive issues, like the Moscow street protests in 2011 and 2012 as well as the conflict in Ukraine, has been dramatically different from the official coverage by Russia's national television stations. Zygar is also the author of the book All the Kremlin's Men (2017), the history of Putin's Russia, based on interviews with Russian politicians from Putin's inner circle.
Viktoriia Yuriyivna Amelina, later known as Victoria Amelina, was a Ukrainian novelist. She was the author of two novels and a children's book, a winner of the Joseph Conrad Literary Award and a European Union Prize for Literature finalist.
The Pushkin House Book Prize is an annual book prize, awarded to the best non-fiction writing on Russia in the English language. The prize was inaugurated in 2013. The prize amount as of 2020 has been £10,000. The advisory board for the prize is made up of Russia experts including Rodric Braithwaite, Andrew Jack, Bridget Kendall, Andrew Nurnberg, Marc Polonsky, and Douglas Smith.
Masha Karp is a political journalist and a scholar on the work of George Orwell. She is the author of two books about Orwell: his biography, in Russian (2017) and "George Orwell and Russia", in English (2023). She is also a translator of English and German literature into Russian, a literary critic and a former BBC editor.
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