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Each week we ask a few of our writers to read their piece from the magazine aloud.

On today's episode, Owen Matthews looks at Russia's exiled media.

Christopher Howes says Handel's Messiah is as much a Christmas tradition as a pantomime,

and Olivia Potts gives her recipe for boiled fruitcake.

First up is Owen Matthews.

Before Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, there was a narrow but clearly defined space for Russia's opposition media.

The fearlessly anti-Kremlin Novoyer Gazeta,

whose editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov,

was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year,

was not only tolerated, but funded by a regime-friendly oligarch

at the behest of the deputy head of Putin's presidential

administration, Sergei Kiyyrienko. Radio station ECHOM Moscow was owned by Gazprom media,

but regularly aired scathing criticisms of the regime. And the independent Dojd TV, that's TV rain, their motto, the optimistic channel, continued to broadcast online from increasingly cramped Moscow offices as advertisers and landlords were pressured to pull their support.

Even as the Kremlin's lavishly funded an ubiquitous propaganda machine filled the airwaves and internet with nationalistic anti-Western vitriol, Russians interested in alternative viewpoints could still freely access independent reporting from opposition journalists in Moscow.

After the invasion, however, that space snapped shut.

A law was passed in the Duma punishing the speaking of fake news, defined as anything,

not confirmed in defense ministry statements, with up to 15 years in prison, instantly criminalizing every opposition

journalist in Russia.

Novo Gazeta and ECHO Moscow were shut down and their staff, along with those of Dojjjj and the English

language Moscow Times fled.

...