Laurence Kelly

The Trials of the Bear

Russia's Empires: Their Rise and Fall – From Prehistory to Putin

By

John Murray 398pp £25 order from our bookshop

After his twenty-year absence teaching Russian history at McGill University in Canada, it is good to welcome Professor Philip Longworth back into the ranks of Anglo-Russian scholars in this country. His seven previous books combine original work with a vivid, highly readable style, above all his biography of Peter the Great’s father, Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich, and his trail-blazing life (the only one in English) of Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov, the extraordinary military genius moulded by Catherine the Great’s imperial wars.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Full of invention which, at its most pedestrian, is eminently Victorian, and at its most unrestrained wildly imagi… ,
    • 'What in other hands could have been a dry, pedantic account of Christianity’s birth and evolution becomes in Holla… ,
    • RT : One of my favourite literary magazines is celebrating 40 years this year. Here is the September edition of… ,
    • 'Now that the Thames is too fast-flowing to freeze, its spirit’s devotees ... have found other climes for their pri… ,
    • 'Bythell glowers past his till at a world in slow free fall.' on the travails of a second-hand book… ,
    • 'It is a scent of animal wrath, of instinctive need, of brutal life which affects the cultured nostrils of our civi… ,
    • 'The day produced countless stories of chance, of people taking one route or another without realising that the dec… ,
    Follow Us