In this tale of intrigue and suppression, Philps, a journalist, investigates what happened when Stalin decided to allow the Anglo-American Press Corps into the U.S.S.R. — on his terms, of course — between 1941 and 1945
Lesley M M Blume, The New York Times, July 3, 2023
Philps’s book vindicates the value of truth, most of all by depicting the lengths that a rare few will go to share it
Paul Musgrave, The Washington Post, July 3, 2023
Mr. Philps who for years reported from Moscow conveys Nadya Ulanovskaya’s story in stirring detail, both her improbable adventures before World War II and the ordeals she experienced after it
Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2023
The Red Hotel is a compelling and often horrifying tale of moral degradation and occasional heroism superbly told by a seasoned reporter who knew Moscow first-hand in the last years of communism
The Economist, July 29, 2023
Camden New Journal article
Sarah Jessica Parker, July 20, 2023
The Stalin playbook remains in use in Putin’s Russia. Domestic media is muzzled. Language is abused. But it’s not the same. Muddying the narrative matters as much as straight coverups
Charles Emmerson, Times Literary Supplement, July 21, 2023
Philps reminds us that the Red Army’s victory in what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War is the origin of the militaristic spirit that Putin has instilled in the Russian people during his two decades in power
James Rodgers, History Today, August 2023
This book gives a superb flavour of the compromises, betrayals and self-delusion required to report on the USSR. Philps’s few heroes are the Russian translators who were the eyes and ears of the visiting journalists. After they had served their purpose, these women and their families were sometimes made to suffer appallingly by the communists merely for having been in contact with a foreigner
Richard Cockett, The Literary Review, May 2023
Philps’s book is almost faultlessly balanced between racy narrative and historical analysis… The Red Hotel is a riveting trip through the labyrinthine corridors of Soviet disinformation, which taught the present regime all it knows.
Julian Evans, The Sunday Telegraph, 9 April 2023
Philps draws on archives, interviews and largely forgotten memoirs ... There are obvious parallels to Vladimir Putin’s arbitrary arrests, Russian state media’s fake news and the depiction of critics as enemies of the state
Roger Boyes, The Times, 6 May 2023
The subject of the Metropol - the hotel of the title - is more topical than ever
James Rodgers, History Today, August 2023
"Alan Philps has given readers a true gem. The Red Hotel is by turns harrowing and heart breaking, heroic and squalid, arousing and soul-destroying, epic and claustrophobic. There are a myriad of books of Russia’s war time experience, perhaps the most profound episode in the history of the modern west, but The Red Hotel stands out among them for its humanity, scholarship, and brilliant, captivating prose.”
Michael Broers, author of Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire: 1811-1821
The best histories set in Russia during World War II call to our sensual appreciation of tangible tastes and sensations - lavish wealth with a dark river running through it; passionate courage on the part of the subjugated and impoverished. Alan Philps, veteran Moscow correspondent, skilfully delivers this chilling tale cloaked in a mood steeped in velvet luxury and fitted with a poison lining.
Carole Adrienne, author of Healing a Divided Nation: How the American Civil War Revolutionized Western Medicine
A cast of conformists, useful idiots, cynics, adventurers and occasional heroes populates Alan Philps’s spectacular book, The Red Hotel … He is terrific at training a spotlight on the local staff who are so often forgotten, and exposing the moral ambiguities of journalists.
Peter Pomerantsev, The Spectator 17 June 2023
An unsettling account of how a cadre of foreign correspondents in Moscow during World War II were pressed to acquiesce to the Kremlin’s censorship. Philp’s thoughtful narrative puts their work into the appropriate historical context. An authoritative history of the terrible ramifications of the silence about Stalin’s lies
Kirkus Reviews
Ostensibly the story of the Allied reporters based during World War II in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, the real heroes of the book are the female translators who at great personal risk sought to tell the truth about Stalin. A timely reminder of Russia’s ambitions and desire to shape the historical narrative
Andrew Lownie, author of Stalin’s Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess
A fabulous book, packed with untold stories, written with the lyrical empathy of an author who knows and feels his subject deeply.
Patrick Bishop, Acclaimed military historian and author of Operation Jubilee and Fighter Boys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-3nuLkR9DEC-SPAN Booknotes+ podcast
C-SPAN podcast with Brian Lamb August 15, 2023
’Red Hotel’
Battlefront Ukraine no. 64 June 2023
’Red Hotel’
Historically Thinking Episode 331
’Red Hotel on NPR’
Covering World War II from a 'gilded cage' in Moscow
'An excellent book...vivid and engaging'
Jonathan Steele, New York Review of Books, March 21, 2014