An evening with John Sweeney

Join award-winning journalist John Sweeney, as he lays bare the fascinating life of Alexei Navalny.

2:19pm, Moscow time, 16 February 2024. The Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District announces that Alexei Navalny is dead. The news sends shockwaves around the world.

Murder in the Gulag goes behind the headlines to reveal what really happened to the Russian opposition leader in the freezing Polar Wolf penal colony in a remote part of Siberia. The book is less a whodunnit - Russian President Vladimir Putin's machinery of repression killed Navalny - than a howdunnit.

This is a warts-and-all portrayal of a highly charismatic but controversial figure who flirted with far-right Russian nationalists before course-correcting, told by someone who knew Navalny personally.