{"title":"David S Tonge","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"kremlin-s-confidant-book-david-s-tonge-9781399059381","title":"The Kremlin's Confidant","description":"Martin Packard is an extraordinary man who has led an extraordinary life. An idealist and a man of liberal instincts, his enthusiasms resulted in him having an inside track in several major events of recent decades, including the coup and bloody dictatorship in Greece and the unravelling of the Soviet Union. Easy going, warm and generous with his friendship, his life story is a ripping read.– Peter Murtagh, journalist and author of The Rape of Greece (Simon \u0026amp; Schuster, London, 1994)  His story needed telling – Peter Preston, editor of The Guardian 1975-1995  This gripping biography is a classic tale of fact being stranger than fiction. Martin Packard was an incurable romantic who thought he could do ethical business in the chaos of Gorbachev's perestroika Russia, but was constantly thwarted by more ruthless rivals or incompetent partners. He was a Don Quixote of the Cold War. His story is a fascinating, alternative and very personal view on the confrontations of his times, from the cynical US and UK policies towards Greece and Cyprus, to the chaotic collapse of the USSR. His tale suggests that cock-up, not conspiracy, is usually the most plausible explanation of history. -  Quentin Peel, former Moscow Correspondent and Foreign Editor of the Financial Times.  Wonderful. They don’t make men like that anymore. - Helena Smith, Correspondent of The Guardian for Greece and Cyprus.  This biography describes how a British naval officer became a Kremlin favourite and CIA target as Gorbachev’s Kremlin decided to open the Soviet economy to the west. In 1985, Moscow reached out to Martin Packard, a retired British naval commander. He was promised unrivalled access to the hidden riches of the Soviet Empire with a cornucopia spread before him as he travelled this long closed land from the Baltic to the Bering Sea.  A harbinger of the technology and foreign exchange needed to halt the Soviet decline, to some Russians he was the most important foreign businessman in the Soviet Union. But, as the Communist Party imploded, this previously-undescribed offer turned into a Faustian bargain, and his life became a captivating saga of rags-to-riches-to-rags.  This book describes his rise, the details of his freelancing for Gorbachev – and his fall.  A former intelligence analyst at the British Mediterranean command in Malta, Packard’s role as Scarlet Pimpernel of the Greek Colonels saw him forced out of the Royal Navy. He then became one of the largest jeans manufacturers in Europe. In this capacity, the insiders of Gorbachev’s perestroika identified him to help them lift the life of the Soviet peoples, an unlikely partnership of the Kremlin and a quintessential Briton, a scion of Empire, Church and Navy, but a non-conformist in every sense.  It is a political tale, where Packard clashes with the British Foreign Office and the CIA in Cyprus and the Colonels’ Greece. Forced out of the Navy, he heads the English Cell of the Greek resistance, shipping printing presses, passports and petards across Europe to Athens. He then becomes an intimate of the wayward but brilliant Dom Mintoff and survives a mysterious poison attempt by ‘Erica’ at a Moscow airport.  It is also a deeply human tale, of a charismatic figure who rose so high, mingled with the mighty of East and West, and then lost it all.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50464130072849,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50464130334993,"sku":"NGR9781399059381","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51592919286033,"sku":"GOR014340415","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52867019735313,"sku":"CIN1399059386G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53239190061329,"sku":"GOR014822982","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1399059386.jpg?v=1751051161"},{"product_id":"enduring-hold-of-islam-in-turkey-book-david-s-tonge-9781911723837","title":"The Enduring Hold of Islam in Turkey","description":"This is the first account in English of how Islamic religious orders dating back to Ottoman times have risen to dominate and define the future of Turkey, Europe's awkward neighbor and the major power in the Eastern Mediterranean. Given its determined program of secularizing the people both under and after the Ataturk regime, Turkey is often projected as a model for the compatibility of Islam with parliamentary democracy. In this absorbing book, journalist and writer David S. Tonge reveals the limitations of that secularization, and its progressive reversal, in what continues to be a profoundly religious country. He describes how Muslim Turks' religious identity has been taken over by branches of one of Islam's great religious orders, the Naqshbandis, whose profoundly anti-Western ethos was honed by British and French colonial incursions into the heartland of their faith. Tonge's history offers a salutary alternative to the wishful narrative developed by Western chancelleries during the Cold War, one which viewed Turkey as a westernizing democracy. The revival of both Turkish nationalism and Islam helped President Erdogan's rise to power, and will shape the regime that succeeds him--illuminating and understanding Turkey's realities of faith and religious politics has never been more important.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51054586396945,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51054590034193,"sku":"NIN9781911723837","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51528067416337,"sku":"GOR014317393","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52111289418001,"sku":"NGR9781911723837","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52328092401937,"sku":"CIN1911723839VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":52888723030289,"sku":"CIN1911723839LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1911723839.jpg?v=1751420781"},{"product_id":"imperial-predator-book-david-s-tonge-9781805266754","title":"Imperial Predator","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Ottoman Empire didn’t just dissolve—it was destroyed. This revealing new history exposes Britain’s central role in tearing it apart.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBritain’s plunder of the Ottoman Empire is one of history’s great land grabs. In 1876, the Ottomans controlled territory as large as contemporary China. By 1923, nine-tenths of this grand heritage was gone, half now under British control. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the ‘civilising mission’ of Lord Salisbury to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, this is the riveting story of Britain’s systematic destruction of the Ottoman Empire. Nineteenth-century diplomacy was brutal, with treaties ignored and promises elided. The Ottomans sought to balance between the European powers, but Britain had a navy second to none and admirals no less impetuous than Nelson. Allying itself with Russia in 1914, Britain spurned the Young Turks, driving them into the German camp—thereby expanding World War One into Asia and increasing British costs by half. Although the Ottomans resisted more fiercely than often recorded, their fateful wartime defeat would taint the future of the whole Middle East. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing on the latest archival research, David S. Tonge shows that the end of the Ottomans was far more than a collapse: it was imperial asset-stripping by a predator at the top of its game. Written in the memory of every Turk and Arab, this history forged today’s world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53182791516433,"sku":"NGR9781805266754","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781805266754.jpg?v=1772792895"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-david-s-tonge.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}