& This extraordinary book brings to life an astonishing place Beautiful prose renders brutality vivid& The Times
- BOOK OF THE WEEK From Peter the Great to Putin this is the unforgettable story of St Petersburg
- one of the most magical menacing & influential cities in the world St Petersburg has always felt like an impossible metropolis risen from the freezing mists & flooded marshland of the River Neva on the western edge of Russia It was a new capital in an old country Established in 1703 by the sheer will of its charismatic founder the homicidal megalomaniac Peter-the-Great its dazzling yet unhinged reputation was quickly fashioned by the sadistic dominion of its early rulers This city in its successive incarnations
- St Petersburg; Petrograd; Leningrad & once again St Petersburg
- has always been a place of perpetual contradiction It was a window on to Europe & the Enlightenment but so much of the glory of Russia was created here its literature music dance & for a time its political vision It gave birth to the artistic genius of Pushkin & Dostoyevsky Tchaikovsky & Shostakovich Pavlova & Nureyev Yet for all its glittering palaces fairytale balls & enchanting gardens the blood of thousands has been spilt on its snow-filled streets It has been a hotbed of war & revolution a place of siege & starvation & the crucible for Lenin & Stalin&s power-hungry brutality In St Petersburg Jonathan Miles recreates the drama of three hundred years in this absurd & brilliant city bringing us up to the present day when
- once more
- its fate hangs in the balance This is an epic tale of murder massacre & madness played out against squalor & splendour It is an unforgettable portrait of a city & its people