In 1945 Isaiah Berlin, working in Russia for the British Foreign Office, met Anna Akhmatova almost by chance in what was then Leningrad. Their time together, only 14 hours in all, was a transforming experience for both and a cardinal moment in literary history. For Akhmatova, Berlin was a guest from the future where her work would survive beyond the nightmare of Stalinism. He had also known St Petersburg as a child before 1914 and was thus a link with that lost world - the subject of her last masterpiece, Poem without a hero, on which she was already at work. For Berlin, the encounter was the most memorable of his life, a return to his homeland and a spur to his ideas on liberty and on history. It had tragic consequences, however. To the Soviet authorities Berlin was a British spy, and Akhmatova became ideological enemy number one. From that moment she was constantly watched by the KGB, isolated and expelled from the Writer's Union. Members of her family were sent to the camps. She herself was convinced that the Cold War dated from her meeting with Berlin, yet she remembered it with emotion for the rest of her life, and it led to some of the finest love poems of the 20th century. While writing this book, Gyorgy Dalos interviewed Isaiah Berlin and other contemporaries who knew Akhmatova well, and had access to hitherto secret Politburo and KGB files. His book throw light on the bitter conflict between dissident writers and the Soviet state.