A moving memoir of the Russian ancestors of the author, who has written and presented programmes for the BBC and Channel 4. I have read other memoirs of this type and, as ever, one is struck by the discontinuity and dislocation of the revolution and the feeling that the world would never be the same, whether better or worse depending on one's view of the past, station in society, and attitude towards the future of Russian society, notwithstanding the appalling acts carried out by both Reds and Whites in the Civil War. A very human book also, with interesting and thought provoking things to say about the nature of real and constructed genealogical memory. ( )