Shadow State: Best-selling author and award-winning journalist Luke Harding to sign copies of new book at Bishop's Stortford Independent office
Best-selling author and award-winning journalist Luke Harding showcases his latest exposé in Bishop’s Stortford on Saturday (July 4).
The Guardian senior international correspondent will be signing copies of Shadow State – Murder, Mayhem and Russia’s Remaking of the West in the Indie’s North Street office from 10am to noon.
Based upon years of investigation, his eighth book, which is officially launched on Thursday (July 2), reveals how Russian spies helped to elect Donald Trump as US president in 2016 and backed the campaign which resulted in Brexit the same year – and how they lied, deceived and murdered to do so, threatening the very basis of Western democracy.
Harding, 52, moved to Stortford in 2012 with wife and fellow writer Phoebe Taplin after the Kremlin deported him from Moscow, where he was The Guardian's bureau chief from 2007 to 2011, in the first case of its kind since the Cold War. The couple’s two children attended Hockerill Anglo-European College.
Harding has built his reputation as one of the best reporters in the world with a series of investigations. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow, and covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
His previous book, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win, was a No 1 New York Times best-seller in late 2017. Spy novelist John Le Carré called it "a superb piece of work... and essential reading for anyone who cares for his country. Amazing research and brilliantly collated".
Other titles include A Very Expensive Poison: The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin’s War with the West; The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man and Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia.
Harding's books have been translated into 30 languages. Two have been made into Hollywood movies. The Fifth Estate, based on WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, co-written with David Leigh, was released in 2013, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Assange. Oliver Stone’s biopic Snowden, adapted from The Snowden Files and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden, appeared in 2016.
A stage version of A Very Expensive Poison premiered in 2019 at the Old Vic theatre in London. Written by Lucy Prebble, it won the Critics’ Circle award for best new play.
Also by the same author are The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken (with David Leigh) and Libya: Murder in Benghazi and the Fall of Gaddafi (with Martin Chulov).
