Stalin, by Edvard Radzinsky (Sceptre, £9.99 in UK)

Is there much left to say about Stalin, except that he was self-evidently a monster? According to this book, in fact there is: Radzinsky claims to have discovered evidence that he was killed by his lieutenants, rather than dying peacably in his bed, and that Khruschev was heavily involved in the cover-up. By that stage the dictator was arguably mad, and his hatred - Stalin lived mainly for his hates - had shifted from the Soviet Union's ethnic minorities to the Jews. His aim, it seems, had always been to be a "secular god" to his people, and his handling of his own cult and the cult of Lenin was masterly. Not only Russians, but a great part of the outside world, were duped into seeing in Stalin a benevolent dictator, a father of his people, and it is only recently that he has been unmasked as the mass murderer of as many as 28 millions.