Nice day for a White Wedding...

I cycled into central Moscow this afternoon, and on my way back out along the Leningradka (the road that leads to St. Petersburg!), I passed Petrovky Park, a late eighteenth century building which was out in the country until the city started expanding rapidly in the 1930s. It was here that Robert Bruce Lockhart went to hear the famous Maria Nikolaevna and her gyspies sing on almost his first night in Moscow in January 1913. His description of that night in Memoirs of a British Agent, and the party that preceded it at the home of the sugar baron, Kharitonkeno (where the British Ambassador now lives), is one of the most evocative descriptions of life in Russia by a foreigner I have ever read. When I used to broadcast on the radio here, I made a programme for New Year with the then Ambassador, Dame Anne Pringle (another Scot). I read the description of the party on air. You can here it at this link.

Today the palace is used for, amongst other things, weddings. And here was yet another White Wedding (as all Russian weddings seem to be). They certainly had a nice day for it.