I do love a doco. Some people can't abide a teachery tone, and just want to dive in and get their own ideas about the thing themselves. But I'm so aware of the yawning chasms of my ignorance (Cubism, Rococo design, Scriabin...) that I appreciate a good telling. Wrap it up with inspiring pictures and music and I'm the perfect audience. Just bring on the cheese straws.

When it comes to the vast sweep of Russian geography and history, my ignorance is as wide as the Russian steppes. And that's despite missspent teenage holidays weeping over Anna Karenina, and - I now recall - an entire university course module on the Russian revolution.

Perhaps it was the years of Iron-Curtaining: the former Soviet Union was hardly a package-holiday destination. I speak for myself of course - there may be thousands of Russian-culture-buffs out there who have been sunning themselves on the Black Sea coast for years, touring the treasures of the Hermitage and buying their fur hats in Gum. Back in the 80s, it was quite the thing for left-leaning single travellers to do the Kremlin-and-St Petersburg tour (and brave the disapproval of their khaki-skirted Intourist guides to any extra-curricular romantic interest).

So when it comes to understanding a context for Russian music and ballet, I'm loving our All The Russians programs.(Type Russians into the search box to get the whole series listed.)

Just as it's impossible to think of Wagner coming from... Surrey, for example, or Puccini being anything but Italian, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Stravinski, Shostakovich couldn't  be anything but Russian. But I was listening to it in a kind of vacuum.

Thanks to Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theater, my vacuum flask is now filled with chilled vodka, and (it being beetroot season) the borscht is bubbling on the stove.

Piccolo-Balalaika