Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union has died in Moscow at the age of 91.
He was a titan on the world stage - a young reformer who wowed the west with his promises to reform the Soviet Union.
But his checkered record included a delayed reaction to the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl and an inability to control enemies within the Communist Party who launched a failed coup against him in August 1991.
Our Washington correspondent Simon Marks was based in Moscow in the 1990s and interviewed Gorbachev after he left office.
