Our lunchtime speaker Paul Kenyon is a distinguished BBC correspondent and BAFTA award-winning journalist and author. He has reported from danger-zones around the world for BBC Panorama, pushing the boundaries of investigative journalism and asking the questions many wouldn’t dare – from tackling Gaddafi’s son in a cage full of lions, to secretly filming Iran’s secret nuclear sites. Kenyon is the recipient of an Association of International Broadcasters Award and three Royal Television Society awards.His latest book is a vivid, brilliant, darkly humorous and horrifying history of some of the strangest dictators that Europe has ever seen.Balanced precariously on the shifting fault line between East and West, Romania’s schizophrenic, often violent past is one of the great untold stories of modern Europe.The country that gave us Vlad Dracula, and whose citizens consider themselves descendants of ancient Rome, has traditionally preferred the status of enigmatic outsider. But this beautiful and unexplored land has experienced some of the most disastrous leaderships of the last century.

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• Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival