About ME
This book was conceived while I was studying French and Russian at Oxford and came across an account of an author’s journey on what is often inappropriately referred to as the Trans Siberian Express (it averages a leisurely 74mph). The names Omsk, Tomsk and Novosibirsk stuck in my memory, evoking an unending rumble of wheels on rails. I’d caught the bug that drives many otherwise sensible people to put a week-long train journey on their bucket list. I reached that goal soon after the fall of the Soviet Union and was captivated, not by dramatic scenery, of which there is little, but by the strangeness, remoteness, air of freedom and sheer expanse of Siberia. As one fellow passenger, a retired Norwegian sea captain, marvelled: “It is amazing to be travelling such a great distance by land.” I wanted to know more about Siberia and why and how Russia managed to build such an astonishing railway. Hence the book.
I live in north London where, like many Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe, my parents fetched up and where I grew up hearing Russian, French, German, accented English and bits of Yiddish spoken, sometimes in the same sentence. After university I worked for a few years in an art gallery in Paris and back in London have been a magazine writer and editor, translator, researcher, restaurant guide writer and a pedantic sub editor. I like to cook, practise tai chi and have been swimming in cold ponds since long before it became fashionable,