Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-12-09 06:07:13 Bookplateleaf 0008 Boxid IA40304008 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Nonsense, for sure. Mrs Harris Goes To Moscow is replete with coincidences and caricatures. But of course caricatures are grist to the Russia-in-fiction mill. We are all about how Russia is perceived. There’s no loo paper … And what’s more there ain’t no stopper for the barftub. The ‘ot water runs cold and the cold water runs ‘ot and the shower don’t run at all. When yer pulls the flush nuffink ‘appens. Yer call this a ‘otel?

There is a charming account of the awe felt by Mrs Harris when she looks out of her fictional central Moscow hotel window (presumably what was then the National and is now the Marriott) … That is a harsh conclusion. Mrs Harris Goes To Moscow is of a distinct type of story. If you want something comfortable, easy-to-read, and faintly ridiculous, then it is fine — it’s a cold Sunday afternoon, put the heating on, make a cup of tea, may be a slice of Dundee cake, and curl up on the sofa with Mrs Harris Goes To Moscow. That will while away an hour or so pleasantly enough, taking you to the attitudes and assumptions of England in the 1970s, and to a view of Moscow and the Soviet Union through that particular lens. urn:lcp:mrsarrisgoestomo0000gall:epub:14244689-4796-44c5-9b5e-71e181a4d521 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier mrsarrisgoestomo0000gall Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2fxgzb54pb Invoice 1652 Isbn 0440059054 Lccn 74019062 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA14623 Openlibrary_edition She was genuinely moved by the sight, moved to murmer, ‘Cor blimey, but ain’t it beautiful,’ and felt suddenly glad that she had come. mrs harris goes to moscow, pp. 82-83Gallico's plot feels contrived, and the caricatures of the Soviet and British diplomats who intercede fall somewhat flat. Even Prince Philip is written in to play a small part in events (and now it's hard not to think of his recent death). Mrs Harris is one of the great creations of fiction - so real that you feel you know her, yet truly magical as well. I can never have enough of her' Justine Picardie

As was the real-life fate of too many couples caught in such East-West relationships, the Soviet authorities would not let Lizabeta leave the country. (Owen Matthews wrote about his parents’ troubles in this regard in Stalin’s Children (Bloomsbury, 2009)). He was a first-class fencer, and a keen deep-sea fisherman. He was married four times, and had several children. Plot-wise, Keystone cop KGB officers mistake a char lady as Lady Char, an aristocrat and therefore clearly a spy. Different Soviet organisations argue over who has authority in relation to foreign visitors. The British Foreign Office, helped by a sympathetic Russian diplomat, finally get their act together, and all ends in the way that such easy-reading should. When your choice of fiction is influenced by where it is set, then you can end up reading novels that you would not otherwise have given a second glance to. So far as Russia in Fiction is concerned, Mrs Harris Goes To Moscow is one such novel.

There are only four Mrs Harris books, but I’ve been gradually working my way through the series since 2012. Mrs Harris Goes to Moscow– known as Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Moscow in the US – is the final one of these, published in 1974, an impressive sixteen years after the first in the series.