The Oyster Problem review – the struggle to save Flaubert from himself
In historian Orlando Figes’ rather too formal first play, the passionate romantic’s friends try to persuade him to be a little more worldly
September 2022
Books interview
Orlando Figes: ‘Gorbachev was a very sharp and likable person’
The award-winning historian on Putin’s cult of personality, why he loves Turgenev, and giving up on books after 20 pages
September 2019
The Europeans by Orlando Figes review – a very continental menage a trois
Orlando Figes vividly captures the 19th-century cultural blossoming of Europe in this story of a diva, her husband and her literary lover
On my radar
On my radar: Orlando Figes’s cultural highlights
The historian on his Barbican home and joining Orpheus in the underworld
The Europeans by Orlando Figes review – the importance of a shared culture
Turgenev’s menage a trois is at the centre of a timely, splendid survey of ‘the unifying force of European civilisation’
September 2015
Top 10s
Top 10 books about forgetting
Books about the erasure of memory are usually about its opposite - the real subject of works as diverse as TS Eliot’s The Waste Land and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is the struggle for fragments of recollection to shore against the ruins
October 2013
David Bowie's top 100 must-read books
Jack Kerouac, Spike Milligan and Sarah Waters among star's favourite authors, revealed at exhibition in Ontario
November 2012
Review responses
Orlando Figes responds to Neal Ascherson's review of Just Send Me Word
The Mishchenko family read the book in draft and were happy with it
September 2012
Every author should post at least one secret online review of their own book
Muriel Gray
Sock puppetry and fake reviews: publish and be damned
June 2012
Orlando Figes and Stalin's victims
Peter Reddaway and Stephen F Cohen
Critical eye
Critical eye: book reviews roundup
May 2012
Just Send Me Word by Orlando Figes – review
The death of celebrity historians is much exaggerated
Richard J Evans
Orlando Figes translation scrapped in Russia amid claims of inaccuracies
Just Send Me Word by Orlando Figes – review
February 2012
An internet troll's opinion should carry no more weight than graffiti
David Mitchell
David Mitchell: The web is full of opinions, but without knowing the authors' motives for posting them why should we pay them any attention?
December 2011
Why on earth is the history man being quite so hysterical?
Catherine Bennett
Catherine Bennett: Niall Ferguson's resort to legal threats over a bad book review smacks on bullying, not intellectual rigour
August 2011
Orlando Figes to give away royalties from next book
Historian promises he will donate to charity half his earnings from study of gulag internee's secret correspondence
October 2010
Crimea: The Last Crusade by Orlando Figes – review
Orlando Figes's history of the Crimean conflict is splendid. By David Hearst
