Siberia
The skull beneath the skin: Ghost Pains, by Jessi Jezewska Stevens, reviewed
Pain lurks below the surface of these sardonic short stories. Happiness is fleeting, and ‘we carry death within us like a stone within a fruit’, one narrator observes
For ruthless inhumanity, the Bolsheviks were unbeatable
Sara Wheeler describes the appalling brutality of the Russian Revolution and its far-reaching aftermath
It’s the fisherman who’s truly hooked
Trying to catch fish with rod and line is a pursuit that, for many, goes far beyond the pleasant passing…
The world’s largest, rarest owl is used for target practice in Siberia
The montane forests of far-eastern Russia have given rise to one of the finest nature books of recent years, The…
‘We are not cattle, we’re people’: everyday hell in Stalin’s labour camps
‘No testimony from this time must ever be forgotten,’ the great Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova says in his afterword to…
Irish ayes
Luigi Cherubini is the pantomime villain of French romantic music. As head of the Paris Conservatoire in the 1820s he…
The icemen cometh
You wouldn’t want to stumble upon the Scythians. Armed with battle-axes, bows and daggers, and covered in fearsome tattoos, the…
If we recreate the mammoth, it will be 99.999 per cent white elephant
Years ago, in an ill-conceived attempt to break into natural history radio, I borrowed a nearly dead car from a…
The greatest American Arctic disaster
In the course of the 19th century, various flotillas of expeditions hastened to the polar regions in little wooden ships…
Glorious Misadventures, by Owen Mathews - review
The brutality and folly of Russia’s bid to conquer America has the makings of grand tragicomedy says Sam Leith
