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Robert Service wins the Duff Cooper Prize

Thursday 25th of February 2010

Robert Service has won the Duff Cooper Prize for Trotsky: A Biography. The look at the life of the Russian revolutionary, which The Times called 'an exemplary biography', was awarded the £5000 prize last night. Other shortlisted titles were Family Britain by David Kynaston; Russia against Napoleon by Dominic Lieven; The Frock-coated Communist by Tristram Hunt; and The Music Room by William Fiennes.

 When we spoke to Robert this morning he commented:

"I'm so pleased and honoured - chuffed indeed - to have won theDuff Cooper prize.   The book was a big project for me in many ways since Trotsky disguised so much of his life and career withlayer upon layer of misleading information.   It was a thrill to handlethe original documents and to feel so close to the man and his times.Trotsky was a hugely talented revolutionary, and a very dangerous one who shared a lot of ideas with Joseph Stalin.    My basic aim was to show that we can't properly understand what communism in Russia was all about unless we look at Trotsky as well as Lenin as they really were rather than through pink-tinged Western glasses."

 

 The Duff Cooper Prize has been celebrating the best in non-fiction writing since 1956. Past winners include Richard Holmes, Willy Dalrymple and John Keegan. http://www.theduffcooperprize.org/

 Read some of the reviews for Trotsky here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/6408016/Trotsky-a-Biography-by-Robert-Service-review.html,

 http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/gray_10_09.html

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6876331.ece