Acknowledgements

I would like to thank everyone who supported me during the research for this book, especially Yury Fokin, Russian ambassador to the United Kingdom in the period 1997–2000, for his invaluable guidance during my work; Her Royal Highness Princess Anne, who gave me her portrait; Jack Harrison, the Lord Mayor of Coventry, for providing me with some important materials; Mrs Elsie and Mr Shaun Kearney, my friends from the UK, for their gift of a valuable English book about Her Majesty during my research; the Battle of Stalingrad Museum and its erstwhile director Boris Usik; and many other people. I am grateful to you all! I must also acknowledge that the publisher Mezhdunarodnye Otnoshenyia has been highly esteemed in my family since my childhood. In my younger days when I would read Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya’s books in my father’s enormous library (for example, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand) I never imagined that a time would come when a book of mine, too, found a place among the other volumes of this beloved publisher!