A Very Expensive Poison review – definitive account of Litvinenko murder

Guardian reporter Luke Harding uses a wealth of new material to retell this amazing and horrifying story

Alexander Litvinenko died almost a decade ago, yet his poisoning may still prove to be Britain’s murder of the century. It was one of those events that, with hindsight, gains ever greater significance until it seems both to sum up an era, and to herald a new one. As an agent in Russia’s FSB, Litvinenko blew the whistle on systemic corruption and was persecuted for it. As an exile, he exposed how the Kremlin elite makes its money. That elite “probably” (the word used by Sir Robert Owen, the judge who held an inquiry into his death and who published his report in January) killed him as a result.

In murdering Litvinenko, Russia’s post-Soviet establishment exposed itself as cruel, incompetent, reckless, venal and corrupt. In its response to the murder, Britain’s rulers showed themselves to be feeble, inconsistent and almost culpably addicted to wishful thinking. It’s an astonishing story and, unsurprisingly, several people have already written about it. Luke Harding, however, is the first writer to do so with the benefit of the material released during Owen’s inquiry, including the Metropolitan police’s vast accumulation of forensic evidence, Litvinenko’s own accounts of his life and poisoning, and evidence from his friends, acquaintances, relatives and associates.

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