'Fans of Soviet history and/or the 2017 comedy film, The Death of Stalin, will remember Levrentiy Pavlovich Beria as the ruthless would-be successor to a certain General Secretary left lying on the floor in a puddle of his own urine following a stroke because, as historian Simon Sebag Montefiore puts it, “his comrades and his doctors were too terrified to treat him in case he was merely drunk”.' (Introduction)