In Dostoevsky time, you worry about stuff like heavy swing doors and Britishness

St Petersburg

The first two things that grab you about Russia are the women’s clothes and the health and safety laws. Or, at least, that is what grabbed me. Wander the streets of St Petersburg, and you don’t see much of either. Wander the museums, even, and you don’t see much of either, either. In the Hermitage, I saw a girl in thigh-high boots and leopard-print hotpants gazing up at a Canaletto. Had she simultaneously been frying blinis on an leaky gas stove, I think I would have taken a photograph. There. That’s it. That’s Russia.

I am here as part of the Liberatum Jewel of Russia Festival, one of a delegation shipped out for a few days by the organiser, the endearingly bonkers Pablo Ganguli. Stephen Frears, Hanif Kureishi, Jon Snow, Alex James (of this parish) and ten or 15 others. For the last few days we have all followed each other around, wide-eyed.