Belton graduated from Durham University (Van Mildert College) in 1996 with a degree in Modern Languages.
[2] Belton was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to journalism.
[11] Further lawsuits have been brought against HarperCollins by Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven; and against both the author and publisher by Shalva Chigirinsky, and Rosneft.
Nick Cohen in The Observer described the litigation as "a pile-on from Russian billionaires on a scale this country has never witnessed" adding "London’s lawyers are hard at work.
Carter-Ruck, CMS, Harbottle & Lewis and Taylor Wessing have a billionaire apiece in a kind of socialism of the litigious.