To the hermitage - Malcolm Bradbury

To the Hermitage tells two tales: a contemporary story of our narrator, a novelist, who has been invited to Stockholm and then to Russia to take part in what is enigmatically referred to as the Diderot Project, and one set two hundred years earlier in which Bradbury brilliantly recreates Diderot's journey to Russia to entertain and enlighten the mind of that powerful monarch, Catherine the Great.

'To the Hermitage reads like a love letter to the life of the mind from a man who, in his work as a writer, critic, academic and teacher has done much to contribute to that dizzying circulation of ideas which is so richly celebrated here' Independent on Sunday

'A charming, engaging, witty, amusing, playful, reflective and informative book by a writer who is in championship-winning form' Sunday Express