Grigory Potemkin was Catherine the Great's lover and, for more than 20 years, the power behind the Russian throne.

ECONOMIST: Non-fiction

With the monarch's approval, Potemkin colonised Crimea, did battle with the Ottoman empire and dreamed up an ambitious plan for reinstating a Christian emperor in Constantinople.

ECONOMIST: Russian history

The third story is a deflationary one, and says that the economic recovery is something of a Potemkin village, kept intact only by dint of central-bank and fiscal stimulus.

ECONOMIST: Buttonwood

Mr Lieven's impressively broad sweep is well complemented by a more tightly focused study of Russian imperialism at work: an excellent, meticulously researched biography of Prince Gregory Potemkin, who in the late 18th century was the most powerful man in Russia.

ECONOMIST: Russian history

In one of the most celebrated cases of borrowing in recent years, the famous scene in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, when a baby carriage bumps its way down a staircase - itself a nod to Eisenstein's Battle-ship Potemkin - was reproduced in its entirety in N.

CNN: Borrowed by Bollywood