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The Polonium trail to Islam: Litvinenko, liminality, and television's (cold) war on terror

This article examines how Aleksandr Litvinenko's death links the ‘war on terror’ with an emergent New Cold War. Based on an analysis of BBC and Russian Channel 1 news bulletins, it highlights the centrality of the post-imperial legacy of the two sides in the dispute to the manner of its unfolding, and to how war on terror discourse reconstructs national identities and international antagonisms. It draws on narratology to account for Litvinenko's liminal position inside and outside Islam (his deathbed conversion), the Russian security apparatus (his prior conversion from Cold War spy to noble dissident), and the UK (his ‘good asylum seeker’ status).