Nearly two centuries after it was first published, Astolphe de Custine’s Letters from Russia remains remarkably relevant today. Custine travelled to Imperial Russia in 1839, four years after his fellow aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville, published Democracy in America. The tsar, like Vladimir Putin today, saw himself as “continuing the work of Peter the Great”. Giuliano da Empoli’s 2022 book The Wizard of the Kremlin is a contemporary attempt to explain Russia. As played by Jude Law, Putin is an austere leader who shuns fancy food, distrusts fawning courtesans and prefers strenuous exercise to alcohol and carousing.

Source: The Irish Times February 16, 2026 15:10 UTC