Operation Barbarossa


The legendary Bill Shankly once drolly summed up how important football had become: “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.” There are very few occasions when football lives up to this quote and is literally a matter of life and death, but a […]

The ultimate grudge match


Josef Stalin is remembered for many things – establishing a brutal dictatorship over the Soviet Union, his determination to create a buffer zone in Eastern Europe and thus close the iron curtain, the capriciousness and cruelty of the security system he set up and brutalising terror of the gulag system. It is, therefore, not surprising that Stalin’s wit and raw intelligence are rarely focused on. But […]

The wicked wit of Josef Stalin