St Petersburg and the British
By Anthony Cross
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Online price: £25.00
This title is currently availableHardback, 352pp Published: 28th August 2008 Category: History, Travel & places |
Traveller or not, Hermitage admirer or not, everyone should find space for this book in their personal library. - Oxford Times
The publication of Cambridge University Professor Anthony Cross's latest book is the first of its kind in over a generation. It provides the latest insight, with a wealth of material gathered from diaries, archives and other sources on the presence and role of British people in the capital over the 300 years since its foundation... British life and influence are laid bare by Professor Cross who makes clear how important the British role was in making St Petersburg one of the world's most magnificent cities. - St Petersburg Times
Some of the accounts produced by these mostly amateur writers are evocative… And there is constant pleasure pleasure not just in reading about vanished delights but in the glimpses of what has remained unchanged. - Times Literary Supplement
The past of the 300 year old city can be savoured in Cross's fine book in all its exotic splendour. Appropriately it is particularly well illustrated and, while much more scholarly than the term generally indicates, will make a splendid vade mecum for future visitors. - Literary Review
A glorious compendium of our love-hate affair with this romantically strange of all European cities.
- New Statesman
The British links with St Petersburg date back to the very year of its foundation and have continued almost unbroken to the present day. Anthony Cross narrates the story of this vibrant and tragic city through the first-hand accounts of its British residents and visitors. A unique anthology of St Petersburg's culture, politics, architecture, commerce, recreation and everyday life, this book includes extracts by Daniel Defoe, Lewis Carroll, W. Somerset Maughan, H.G. Wells, Isaiah Berlin, J.B. Priestley and Alan Sillitoe.
352 pages
90 colour photographs

