Beslan | Granta

  • Published: 04/02/2008
  • ISBN: 9781862079939
  • 130x20mm
  • 224 pages

Beslan

Timothy Phillips

Tim Phillips’ book tells the human story of the siege – of the terrible toll that thirst, hunger and sleeplessness took on the hostages, of the bravery of those who dealt with the terrorists, such as the elderly headmistress of the school and the doctor who tried to relieve the suffering of the young children. Phillips also looks at the authorities’ response to the siege and finds it severely wanting. He has spent time in Beslan researching the book, talking to those involved and those affected, listening to the conspiracy theories, and trying to set the events of September 2004 in their wider context of centuries of conflict and enmity in the Caucasus.

Fine and subtle ... The book, based on extensive interviews, rouses pity and horror

John Lloyd, Financial Times

Timothy Phillips ... has done a heroic and, one might have thought for a foreigner, impossible job: he has reconstructed from the testimony of many hundreds of witnesses the hellish events of that September ... His work is a fit memorial to the dead ... Timothy Phillips's book provides the victim's story

Donald Rayfield, Literary Review

The Author

Timothy Phillips is the author of The Secret Twenties: British Intelligence, the Russians, and the Jazz Age (Granta, 2017) and Beslan: The Tragedy of School No. 1 (Granta, 2008). He grew up in Northern Ireland and now lives in London. He holds a doctorate in Russian from Oxford University and has written and spoken widely on British and Russian history.

More about the author →

From the Same Author

Timothy Phillips on Granta.com

Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition

One Image

Timothy Phillips

‘I was in Sarandë as part of a journey across the entire length of the old Iron Curtain, from Norway to Azerbaijan.’

Timothy Phillips on the legacy of the Iron Curtain in Albania.

Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition

Getting Away With It

Timothy Phillips

A case of Russian espionage from Tim Phillips' book The Secret Twenties: British Intelligence, the Russians, and the Jazz Age.