John Sweeney The Killer in the Kremlin
and Hunting Ghislaine
Award-winning nvestigative journalist John Sweeney discusses his cutting edge research into two very different topics:
In his best-selling book Killer in the Kremlin, he takes readers from the heart of Putin's Russia to the killing fields of Chechnya, to the embattled cities of an invaded Ukraine.
In a disturbing exposé of Putin's sinister ambition, Sweeney draws on thirty years of his own reporting - from the Moscow apartment bombings to the atrocities committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya, to the annexation of Crimea and a confrontation with Putin over the shooting down of flight MH17 - to understand the true extent of Putin's long war.
Drawing on eyewitness accounts and compelling testimony from those who have suffered at Putin's hand, we see the heroism of the Russian opposition, the bravery of the Ukrainian resistance, and the brutality with which the Kremlin responds to such acts of defiance, assassinating or locking away its critics, and stopping at nothing to achieve its imperialist aims.
In the midst of one of the darkest acts of aggression in modern history - Russia's invasion of Ukraine - this book shines a light on Putin's rule and poses urgent questions about how the world must respond.
John Sweeney will also discuss his forthcoming book on the dark and disturbing true story of Ghislaine Maxwell, tracing her path from growing up as the daughter of Robert Maxwell to her association with financier and convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who suffered a tragedy, the death of her father, a war hero, a philanthropist, a good man, in suspicious circumstances. She fled to New York where she made a new life with a brilliant mathematician. Her name is Ghislaine Maxwell and her lover was Jeffrey Epstein. Through Jeffrey, and her family name, Ghislaine became friends with some of the most powerful people on earth, ex-President Bill Clinton and President-to-be Donald Trump and the second son of the Queen of England, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.
But this is no fairy tale. Hunting Ghislaine sets out the other side of the story, and it's one of the darkest you will ever read.
Ghislaine's father, Robert Maxwell, was a sadist, a war criminal, a monster. His cruelty deformed Ghislaine Maxwell long before she met Jeffrey Epstein. Her one-time lover was convicted for being a paedophile. So Ghislaine's life has been spent serving not one monster but two.
John Sweeney is a writer and journalist who, while working for the BBC, has challenged dictators, despots, cult leaders, con artists and crooked businessmen for many years. As a reporter, first for the Observer and then for the BBC, Sweeney has covered wars and chaos in more than eighty countries and been undercover to a number of tyrannies, including Chechnya, North Korea and Zimbabwe. Over the course of his career, John has won an Emmy, two Royal Television Society Awards, a Sony Gold Award, a What the Papers Say Journalist of the Year Award, an Amnesty International Award and the Paul Foot Award.
Listing Details
Friday 21st October, 12.00pm
Venue
Dorford Centre, Bridport Road
Ticket Prices
Adults: £10.00