Biography

Edward Lucas is the Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for The Economist. He has been covering the region for more than 20 years, witnessing the final years of the last Cold War, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Soviet empire, Boris Yeltsin's downfall and Vladimir Putin's rise to power. From 1992 to 1994, he was the managing editor of The Baltic Independent, a weekly English-language newspaper published in Tallinn. He holds a BSc from the London School of Economics, and studied Polish at the Jagiellonian University, Cracow. The New Cold War is his first book.

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Q & A

What are your 5 favourite books, and why?

Sword of Honour Trilogy (Evelyn Waugh) — best novel of the Second World War
Middlemarch (George Eliot)—best insight into life and love
Engineer of Human Souls  (Jozef Škvorecký) — best novel about communism and emigration
The Light that Failed  (Rudyard Kipling) — best book about love, war and journalism
Rates of Exchange (Malcolm Bradbury) — best comic novel about eastern Europe and
The Captive Mind  (Czeslaw Milosz) — best book about the communist mindset

Who are your 5 favourite authors, and why?

Jozef Škvorecký, Ivan Klima and Milan Kundera, for their insights into communism in Czechoslovakia.
Evelyn Waugh, for his bleak portrayals of faith and disillusion.
Rudyard Kipling for his historical and emotional depth.

Who or what was your biggest influence in deciding to become a writer?

A way of being paid to travel in my favourite region, talk to my favourite people, and think hard about my favourite subjects.

What inspired you to write The New Cold War: How the Kremlin menaces Russia and the West?

A growing sense of urgency and impatience with the West’s blindness towards the well-documented and growing threat from Russia.

What are you reading now?

Sword of Honour (for the 30th time)

What is the most overrated book you've ever read?

Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man And The Sea.

If you could require everyone to read just one book what would it be?

Anne Applebaum: Gulag.

What's the best thing you've ever written?

An article called “The Death of Comrade Fear” describing the collapse of communism in 1989

What's the last piece of your writing that you hated and threw in the wastepaper bin and why?

The first draft of last week’s europe.view, the weekly column on eastern Europe that I write for The Economist’s website

Is there any particular ritual involved in your writing process (favourite pen, lucky charm, south-facing window)?

Absolutely none: I can write in any conditions, at any time.

Author photograph: Robert Kowalewski / Agencja Gazeta