BBC Russia: A Journey to the Heart of a Land and Its People

In this timely and revealing portrait, distinguished author and broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby crosses eight time zones and covers 10,000 miles, from Murmansk in the Arctic Circle to the Asian city of Vladivostok, in an attempt to get beneath the skin of modern Russia.

Travelling by road, rail and boat, his epic journey takes him from the splendour of St Petersburg to remote parts of Siberia. Jonathan was the only British television journalist to interview President Gorbachev during the Cold War, and, returning to Russia for the first time since those days, he discovers a land transformed.

But despite economic progress, he finds aspects of Russian society deeply troubling, and takes an unflinchingly critical look at the way Russia has been run during the Putin years. For Jonathan, crossing the immense Russian landmass became as much an interior journey as an exterior one.

Filled with a dazzling array of historical and literary references, this is a riveting and illuminating account of modern Russia.