Moscow

The spy who came back from retirement: Karla’s Choice, by Nick Harkaway, reviewed

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Given a new lease of life by John le Carré’s son, George Smiley gets embroiled in a murky affair involving the Circus’s key Stasi asset and a missing Hungarian literary agent

Sarah Rainsford joins the long list of foreign correspondents banned from Russia

10 August 2024 9:00 am

After decades of writing about Russian affairs, Rainsford now finds herself persona non grata – but admits she no longer feels nostalgia for the country

My summer of love with God’s gift

1 June 2024 9:00 am

Studying in Russia in 1994, Viv Groskop falls in love with a Ukrainian rock guitarist named Bogdan Bogdanovich and accompanies him on a visit home

Celebrating Konstantin Paustovsky — hailed as ‘the Russian Proust’

15 January 2022 9:00 am

When is a life worth telling? The Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky’s six-volume autobiography The Story of a Life combines high…

‘The Conversation’, by Henri Matisse, 1908–1912, the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

It is not the masterpieces that were lost, but the collectors, Natalya Semenova rights a wrong

6 October 2018 9:00 am

It is not as surprising at it sounds that two of the greatest collectors of modern art should have been…

The plight of the returnee: A Terrible Country, by Keith Gessen, reviewed

18 August 2018 9:00 am

If the 20th century popularised the figure of the émigré, the 21st has introduced that of the returnee, who, aided…

Playing Stalin for laughs

22 July 2017 9:00 am

Christopher Wilson’s new novel is much easier to enjoy than to categorise. And ‘enjoy’ is definitely the right word, even…

I met Donald Trump’s Russian fan club (and fought them on TV)

19 November 2016 9:00 am

Moscow To the Union Jack pub on Potapovsky Lane for a US election night party. The jolly Muscovite Trump supporters…

Teffi: from Russia with laughs

21 May 2016 9:00 am

‘Ah! Scrubbing the deck! My childhood dream! As a child I had once seen a sailor hosing the deck with…

Spies in the spotlight

7 November 2015 9:00 am

Spying is a branch of philosophy, although you would never guess it from that expression on Daniel Craig’s face. Its…

The surreal beauty of Soviet bus stops

12 September 2015 9:00 am

The Soviet Union was a nation of bus stops. Cars were hard to come by, so a vast public transport…

Can Putin ban homosexuality and endorse polygamy? Yes he can

8 August 2015 9:00 am

The Kremlin is tying itself in ideological knots as it tries to make new friends in the Muslim world

It’s dark days for dogs and their owners

14 March 2015 9:00 am

So who is poisoning all the doggies, then? I assumed, when the first horrible reports came through from Crufts, that…

Panic, profiteering and a mysterious girl in a Mini: notes from Moscow

17 January 2015 9:00 am

 Moscow Here we go again. The rouble slides, then tumbles, and slides again. For those of us who remember the…

Soviet greyness, literary mediocrity and hot dates

9 August 2014 9:00 am

Right at the outset of this autobiographical novel — in fact it reads more like a memoir — Ismail Kadare…

Governments have failed — mayors are the future

12 April 2014 9:00 am

The power to effect real change may lie with dynamic city halls rather than ossified national governments

Secrets of the Kremlin

14 December 2013 9:00 am

A building bearing testimony to the power of eternal Russia; a timeless symbol of the Russian state; a monument to…

Hitler didn't start indiscriminate bombings — Churchill did 

26 October 2013 9:00 am

‘I cannot describe to you what a curious note of brutality a bomb has,’ said one woman who lived through…

One Night in Winter, by Simon Sebag Montefiore - review

28 September 2013 9:00 am

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s One Night in Winter begins in the hours immediately following the solemn victory parade that marked the…