Russian bear of a man Orlando Figes enjoys a Life that does justice to the complex contradictions of Peter the Great

From: The Sunday Telegraph London | Date: June 30, 2002| Author: | Copyright information

Peter the Great:

A Biography

by Lindsey Hughes

Yale, pounds 19.95, 285 pp

pounds 19.95 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222

PETER THE GREAT was a larger-than-life figure. At 6ft 7in tall, he lived up to his name. In Russia he has always been a man enshrined in myth - the "giant genius" who dragged his country into the modern world.

The famous opening lines of Pushkin's Bronze Horseman, which every Russian schoolchild knows by heart, crystallised this image of the providential Tsar, the founder of St Petersburg, his new Imperial capital, in 1703On a shore by the desolate

waves

He stood, with ...

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