This is John Batchelor.

Another anecdote from Alan Phillips, the author of the new book The Red Hotel, the

Metropolitan Hotel in Moscow in wartime, Second World War, Stalinist. at the

and hotel in the war time, Second World War, Stalinist state security watching the

journalists so that they only will put out the official line no

matter what they know and their translators and their translators take

opportunities to both provide food for their families, Moscow is starving and

find a way out of the Soviet prison that Stalin has made the

country under attack and at the same time under attack from your own people.

And this is the story of Tanya and how she takes every opportunity to get inside the

Metropolitan Hotel and make herself useful in order to get out of Russia to escape what she sees as the end. Here's

Tanya and her adventures getting into the Metropole Hotel with the English that she's learned in school.

Alan Phillips talking. There's much more of this.

The Red Hotel is a marvel of anecdotes of young people taking advantage of the fused moments in

their lives when they can escape doom. Here's Alan. Her husband, her Russian husband was a documentary filmmaker and they had separated, but when they separated, he gave her something more valuable

in wartime than money. And that was a book of tickets which allowed him, allowed her to have lunch at the the house of house of artists a sort of

of cultural center and she was having having lunch I mean not because she was greedy because otherwise she'd just be living

of black bread.

So she actually had some vegetables and things like that and an occasional piece of meat and the director of the place said

Cobra I think you speak English and she said yes said would you like to would you like

to compare would you like to be the master of ceremonies at a concert

which we are giving for the allies for the British and Americans?

...