RussianAmbassador6 - Monday Morning Memo

What to read, bearing in mind a visit to St Petersburg… EPISODE 6

If you’re interested in history, Simon Montefiore is your man. Fantastic novel-like narrative, but all “true facts”. His portraits of Stalin are the only books I’ve read on people like that, which truly helped me understand them. Orlando Figes is Montefiore’s dull cousin by comparison, but his books cover important subject matter (and I’m just being rude saying that).

Captain Fred Burnaby gives a rollicking tale of travel across Tsarist Russia in the 19^th Century. It’s a true story, by a Captain in the British Army. All political correctness filters are off, he says it like he sees it, it’s funny, informative, amazing, and page-turning. Read this one – almost nothing’s changed, and it starts in Petersburg.

Well, I hope that’ll give you an idea of where to start.

Love,

“All matadors are gored dangerously, painfully, and very close to fatally, sooner or later, in their careers, and until a matador has undergone this first severe wound you cannot tell what his permanent value will be. For no matter how much he may keep of his courage you cannot tell how it will affect his reflexes. A man may be as brave as the bull himself to face any danger and still, by his nerves, be unable to face that danger coldly. When a bullfighter can no longer be calm and put danger away after the fight once starts, can no longer see the bull come calmly, without having to nerve himself, then he is through as a successful bullfighter. Nerved-up bullfighting is sad to watch. The spectators do not want it. They pay to see the tragedy of the bull; not the man.”

- Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, p. 166-167

What to read, bearing in mind a visit to St Petersburg… EPISODE 6

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