Music

Standard issue for all women.

Hello, Hannah here and welcome to this week's Sunday Chops, in which I chat to the journalist

and author Lucy Ward about her excellent new nonfiction book, The Empress and the English

Doctor, How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus.

It tells the tale of the Russian Empress's decision to become inoculated against small

pox and explains why it was so bold and momentous.

An interesting topic to be writing about in a pandemic, I'm sure you'll agree, and to

be publishing during a Russian War of Aggression.

This is actually the first in-person interview I've done since February 2020 and Cambridge

chose to celebrate this by being as noisy as humanly possible.

We were in a cafe that decided to crank up the music and then close, so we moved to another

that decided to turn on a fan on one of the coldest days of the year and then clean its

coffee machine.

But I think if the subject is interesting enough that that shouldn't matter, a man is this

subject interesting.

Lucy's book is out this week and I heartily recommend it, until next time.

Tell me where you first discovered this story.

I would love to tell you that I first discovered this story buried in the National Archives

or in a deep inner Russian archive, but actually, if you want the truth, I discovered it

in a school playground.

I was collecting my son from a new school.

...