Soviet-era dacha in Resheti, near Ekaterinburg I have just dusted down a talk that I gave some years ago about Russian dachas. I have been asked to give it again in early December. The lecture traces the history of this aspect of Russian life from its start in the 18h Century to the recent past. […]
In this very strange year for weather unseasonable floods have been reported in some parts of the world. I was reminded of this recently when giving my talk ‘The Bronze Horseman, A tale of Peterburg’ to a group of hospitable WI Members in Long Melford. The talk focusses on Peter the Great and the founding […]
Some months ago I rashly promised to lead a session on Russian secular architecture for the Architecture Group at Sudbury U3A. As the day approached, I started to wonder why I had agreed to do it. My knowledge of architecture, while quite extensive, is strictly that of an amateur; I have little clue about the […]
Two weeks ago, I was very pleased to be invited to speak at the CamRuSS Russian/Ukrainian summer school held at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. I devoted part of my talk to looking at the sources I used when researching my novel, Small Acts of Kindness, A Tale of the First Russian Revolution. Being students of Russian […]
Over Christmas I read the novel The Monastery by Zakhar Prilepin, translated from the Russian by Nicholas Kotar. The book was written in 2014 and published in English last year. It is a long read, and at 750 pages, probably overlong. It is also rather a harrowing story since the book deals with a particularly […]
In my talk about the Art of Resistance (see talks tab above) I devote some time to Malevich’s famous image from the beginning of the 20th Century, The Black Square. There is now an excellent Heni Talk about this picture available on-line given by the Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery Iwona Blazwick. She reflects […]
V.G. Perov. The Last Inn (1868) Oil on Canvas One of my talks is on the subject of Russian roads. Russia is a big place and even today many roads are not particularly easy to navigate outside the main cities. In the talk I look at many aspects of the idea of rhe road. I […]