Anthony Cross has devoted many years to investigating British relations with Russia since the eighteenth century, and this handsomely produced volume is the most rewarding of his numerous publications on the subject. Britons (Scots and Irish, many of them Jacobite exiles, were among the more prominent and talented contacts) enjoyed close relations with the place almost from the outset of Peter the Great’s creation of his magnificent city.

Generally speaking the views of English visitors and residents (the wealthier of whom lived on the magnificent ‘English Quay’) were favourable both to the architecture and social life of the capital. During the eighteenth century some observers indulged in sardonic comments on the Russian propensity (still in evidence today) to