St Petersburg

The spy with the bullet-proof Rolls-Royce

7 September 2024 9:00 am

Stationed in Paris from 1926 to 1940, the wealthy, debonair ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale, often seen as a model for James Bond, was also a supremely effective intelligence officer

Introducing Tchaikovsky the merry scamp

24 August 2024 9:00 am

Rescuing the composer from his tortured image, Simon Morrison presents him as a sort of Till Eulenspiegel character, laughing and pranking his way through life

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

Short and sweet: Xstabeth, by David Keenan, reviewed

7 November 2020 9:00 am

Aneliya, the Russian narrator of David Keenan’s enjoyably weird new novel, is worried about her dad. Tomasz’s modest music career…

La Bayadère was first staged by Marius Petipa at the Bolshoi in 1877, to the music of Ludwig Minkus

Where would ballet be without Marius Petipa?

27 July 2019 9:00 am

Should the man on the Clapham omnibus ever turn his mind to ballet, he is bound to envisage the work…

The outcome of Diderot’s discussions with Catherine was that she largely ignored his advice. Engraving from François Guizot’s Histoire de la France

How Diderot’s pleas to end despotism fell on deaf ears in Russia

23 March 2019 9:00 am

Denis Diderot (1713–84) is the least commemorated of the philosophes. Calls for his remains to be moved to the Panthéon…

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…

A vast stage set: St Petersburg

St Petersburg: now's the right time to visit Russia's rebel city

26 March 2016 9:00 am

Looking across the wide Neva from Vasilyevsky Island, the Palace Embankment shimmers in the river, suspended between water and sky.…

The Winter Palace, St Petersburg, 1840, by Ferdinand Victor Perrot (Pushkin Museum)

The man who knows all the Hermitage's secrets - and he's keeping them

10 October 2015 9:00 am

The front cover of this book describes the Hermitage as ‘the Greatest Museum in the World’. That sobriquet must go…

A.N. Wilson's diary: The book that made me a writer – and the pushchair that made me an old git

23 August 2014 9:00 am

Like many inward-looking children, I always doodled stories and poems. Knowing one wanted to be a writer is a different…

Peter Mandelson’s diary: The accomplishments of George Osborne – and Vladimir Putin

31 May 2014 9:00 am

My trips to meet Russians in Russia these days are a little less controversial than my encounter with them in…

Crimean notebook: ‘They’ll have to break all my bones to make me a Russian citizen’

15 March 2014 9:00 am

Vladimir Putin still swears that there are no Russian troops in Crimea, so their mission is to say as little…