I will admit that I knew very little about this case. Like many others, I saw the photograph of Litvinenko in hospital as he lay dying. I read his moving statement and was impressed at his personal bravery and stoical response to events. In fact, he was far braver than I imagined – using his final days to provide the police with as much evidence of the events that had led him to his terrible, and unusual, death. Prebble need not have worried. Marina Litvinenko proved not only an enthusiast for the project “but really playful, very twinkly, quite dry”. Prebble told her how a stage play – particularly her stage play – would be different from a book, in that it would be going feet first into emotional areas. Litvinenko understood that. “She told me two things that I valued hugely,” Prebble says. “The first was: please don’t forget the cost to our lives of what happened. And the second thing was: please don’t forget that this is a love story.” 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.

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. A true story of murder and conspiracy that points directly to Vladimir Putin, by The Guardian’s former Moscow bureau chief and author of The Snowden Files and Collusion I really enjoyed this book, although the story itself is a deeply tragic one, and it provided some satisfying answers about a political assassination which happened not in some strange country, but right in the heart of London. In the current environment, with a significant amount of interest in Russia and its influence in the world, this is a very relevant and cogent piece that should be of interest to anyone wanting to know more. Contemptuously commanding’: Haydn Gwynne in Holly Race Roughan’s production of Hedda Tesman. Photograph: Johan Persson Luke Harding served as the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, and ran into enough trouble there to provide material for his 2011 book, The Mafia State. He has also published works on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and American whistleblower Edward Snowden. Given his knowledge of Russia and his experience of writing about the underbelly of secret services, the Litvinenko story might seem perfect for him.

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It’s all bracingly realist – the biggest laugh comes from his assertion that former Secretary of State for Justice Chris Grayling “really is a colossal tit”. But then Marina steps outside the neon-framed box of the café and the stories within stories begin.

This is possibly the first serious book to look at the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, post the publication of the official inquiry. Even prior to that, while there were many books on the subject, more than a few were either conspiracist in nature or had an axe to grind. Prebble enjoyed her work on the HBO show Succession, which is soon to begin a second season. Photograph: AP

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Litvinenko's story is of course central but he was far from being a lone victim of state sponsored murder. The methods varied, some more imaginative than others. Swerving in and out of reality has been a recurring concern of Prebble’s plays: it is her true subject and it is what makes her so truly theatrical. In Enron she put the digital and the fleshy side by side; in The Effect she put on stage manufactured emotion. Here she can make an audience think it has swallowed Alice’s delusion-inducing potion. Scale and mood flip from moment to moment. From scenes fuelled by toxic masculinity to scenes commandeered by the determination of Marina Litvinenko, for whom this is a love story and a tragedy. It was a show about a woman who works in the computer-games industry and falls in love with a guy and moves to London to be with him. And finds herself being a stepmother to his kids and hating it. It was supposed to be funny but it came out bleak.” Litvinenko was in intelligence, a pro-democracy good guy who tried to warn a newly promoted Putin about growing corruption within the intelligence service. He was ignored, harassed, arrested, and finally forced to seek asylum in Britain. He was finally murdered after an earlier attempt using a weapon that could only be produced by a government-sized entity.

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.”

Whatever Putin has — or doesn't have — on Trump, the idea of Russia as some sort of friend to the U.S. and other western democracies is unbelievably dangerous. The U.S. has underestimated Russia’s intentions before, and that failure led to the more than 40-year standoff we now know as the Cold War.

A couple of random facts that jumped out at me while reading: who knew that international spies meet in London bookshops?! As well as lie detector cheating techniques involving walking a dog on a spring morning or thinking of a sexually arousing scene! Ripped from the headlines? Yes, but not today's headlines about the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK. The poisoning that this book focuses on (although it does explore others) was done in 2006 and the British government did not call Putin out on it, although a 2015 study by a UK judge found that it was probable that Putin was behind the 2006 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. It was a messy killing, as the poisoners left quite a radioactive trail behind them. 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 o Gupta has moved the action to the Calcutta of 1879, the date the play was written. Every part is recalibrated. Crucially, Nora becomes Niru, a young Bengali woman; her husband, Tom Helmer, is a colonial administrator. Niru shimmers in saris; Helmer (Elliot Cowan) is buttoned into a three-piece suit: he calls his wife his little skylark. When he bends over her is he protecting or entrapping her in the cage of his body?

theatre

The play offers a compelling portrait of Russian corruption and British vacillation – it took nearly a decade for a public inquiry to be launched – and its multifaceted approach is anchored by strong central performances. MyAnna Buring’s Marina emerges as a woman of implacable determination and ferocious loyalty who shares her husband’s obsession with truth. Tom Brooke captures the complexity of Litvinenko, whose moral zeal is accompanied by a desire to protect his family. There is also a gallery of fine supporting performances from Reece Shearsmith as the deviously dangerous Putin, Lloyd Hutchinson and Michael Shaeffer as the barely competent assassins, Peter Polycarpou as the glad-handing Bereszovsky and Thomas Arnold as Marina’s staunch legal ally. It’s an evening that instructs as it entertains and that leaves one appalled at Britain’s initial reluctance to do anything that might antagonise Moscow.