A woman carrying a portrait of Vladimir Putin takes part in a pro-government anti-Maidan rally. Photograph: Alamy StockView image in fullscreenA woman carrying a portrait of Vladimir Putin takes part in a pro-government anti-Maidan rally. Photograph: Alamy StockBook of the dayBooksReviewThis account of how Putin’s new Russia rose from the ruins of the Soviet Union is judicious, humane and highly entertaining Everyone’s talking about Russia again, troll farms, sanctions, money laundering, and all the rest of it.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and YoungInterview‘There was an enormous amount of drugs being taken’: Graham Nash on groupies, feuds, divorce and egoSimon HattenstoneThe Crosby, Stills and Nash singer on the wild early years, Joni Mitchell, his former bandmates and why his children no longer speak to him “I feel good,” a ludicrously youthful Graham Nash tells me. “Eighty years old and still rocking.” And some. Nash has rocked his way twice into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – as a member of the pop group the Hollies and as part of the groundbreaking folk-rock super-group Crosby, Stills and Nash.

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, laughs off the idea that he could be facing a right-wing insurgency from within his party, led by the former prime minister, Tony Abbott Published: 11:38 PM ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaK6ZmbKwi8%2Banp51YWmBdQ%3D%3D

History booksReviewAn engaging tale of how an unsung group from the Women’s Royal Naval Service helped to defeat the U-boats This is a curious book. The publisher, though perhaps not the author, claims that it reveals how the second world war was won, but the eponymous “secret game” does not appear until page 143 and then turns out to be a training exercise for convoy escort officers. No doubt this was a useful addition to the armoury of reforms and new equipment that marked the final stages of thebattle of the Atlantic, the theme of the book.

MusicThe subject of a new documentary, who is also portrayed in an upcoming Dalí biopic, scorned modelling as ‘immoral and stupid’, turning instead to a lifetime of underrated, high-minded pop At the peak of the disco era in the late 1970s, Amanda Lear, who had established herself as a singer after 15 years of being a Vogue model and muse to everyone from Salvador Dalí to Bryan Ferry, had a bone to pick.