In the course of the past 45 years, Angus Roxburgh has translated Tolstoy, met four successive Russian presidents and been jinxed by a Siberian shaman. He has come under fire in war zones and been arrested by Chechen thugs.

He was wooed by the KGB, who then decided he would make a lousy spy and expelled him from the country.

In Moscow Calling Roxburgh presents his Russia – not the Russia of news reports, but a quirky, crazy, exasperating, beautiful, tumultuous world that in forty years has changed completely, and yet not at all.

From the dark, fearful days of communism and his adventures as a correspondent as the Soviet Union collapsed into chaos, to his frustrating work as a media consultant in Putin’s Kremlin, this is a unique, fascinating and often hilarious insight into a country that today, more than ever, is of global political significance.