Talk by Howard Amos     

In his book Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruins of Empire, writer and journalist Howard Amos takes the reader to historical sites, including Pushkin’s ancestral estate and an ancient monastery, to an orphanage and psychiatric hospital; and from half-abandoned villages to the heavily guarded frontier where Russia meets NATO. 

He tells the stories of the people who reside in this corner of Russia, the Pskov region in the northwest; from border guards and businessmen, to the political and religious elite, historians and artists, former Red Army officers, and families of Russian soldiers who fought in Ukraine; as a way of shedding light on the country as a whole.

There will be tea, coffee and biscuits after the talk.