To the Hermitage Guy Gunaratne making new friends and big

making new friends and big decisions

Five years after Charles II's triumphant return to London there is growing mistrust of his extravagant court and of corruption among his officials - and when a cart laden with gunpowder explodes outside the General Letter Office

When the entire Soviet Union wheat crop is destroyed by a devastating string of failures

a boss who had a lot of money to do up his estate

is overwhelmed by the thrill of opportunity and startled by his own hunger for friendship

To the Hermitage Guy Gunaratne making new friends and bigTo the Hermitage tells two stories. The first is of the narrator, a novelist, on a trip to Stockholm and Russia for an academic seminar called the Diderot Project. The second takes place two hundred years earlier and recreates the journey the French philosopher Denis Diderot made to Russia at the invitation of Catherine the Great, a woman whose influence could change the path of history . . . Malcolm Bradburys last novel is rich with his satirical