One Night in Winter

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the following friends and sources whose stories have helped inspire this novel with the elixir of passion and the detail of authenticity: Hugh Lunghi, Gela Charkviani, Nestan Charkviani, General Stepan Mikoyan and his daughter Aschen Mikoyan, Sergo Mikoyan, Stanislas Redens, Galina Babkova, Rachel and Marc Polonsky; and Sophie Shulman.

First: Hugh Lunghi. Hugh and I became friends while writing my books on Stalin because he translated for Churchill at some of the Big Three meetings with Stalin. He kindly told me the entire story of his Russian love affair which inspired Serafima’s story. Without him the book could not have been written.

Gela Charkviani, son of Kandide Charkviani, Stalin’s First Secretary of Georgia 1938–51, shared his elegant memoirs of élite life, Memoirs of a Provincial Communist Prince. Sophie Shulman kindly let me read her fascinating memoirs, Life Journey of a Secular Humanist. Gela Charkviani and Sophie Shulman answered my questions about their schooldays in Stalin’s Russia. General Stepan Mikoyan, air force pilot, and Sergo Mikoyan, sons of Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan, were both arrested (Sergo was fourteen) in the real Children’s Case and both talked to me about their experience, as did Stanislas Redens, Stalin’s nephew, who was also arrested.

Thanks to the Polonskys who had me to stay in Molotov’s apartment in the Granovsky building.

I am hugely grateful to my brilliant, tireless and meticulous editor and publisher, Selina Walker, and to the irrepressibly superb Georgina Capel, the best agent in town. Thanks to my parents for editing this.

Above all, thanks to my wife Santa for the supreme gifts of serene love and best friendship; and for shrewd advice on this book; and to my adored children Lily and Sasha, who have inspired the children in both my Russian novels.