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 […]