Correction

Tuesday, 10 December 2002

In Saturday's post Death and Resurrection I described Prince Felix Yusupov's account of the death of Rasputin as being:

... widely regarded as the finest piece of short fiction in twentieth century Russian literature.

In the light of the recent High Court ruling in Gutnick vs Dow Jones, I think it may be wise to retract this statement, given that I don't know where it may eventually be read and that it may be hurtful to Prince Yusupov's descendents and God only knows what the current Russian laws on this sort of thing are. What I meant to say, of course, is that Prince Yusupov's account of the death of Rasputin is widely regarded as an accurate eyewitness report of a major historic event, by one of the key participants in that event. No that won't do, that's only digging myself in deeper - what I meant to say is if any one makes any trouble about that post it's gone, and just you try to prove that it ever existed.