Moscow's knocked me out:  all I want to do is sleep (I find I need 3 days to adapt to local conditions when I come back from anywhere). The news is far from brilliant.  It stretches out like a chain along a village road which just gets muddier and muddier.  Clay, shit - it all looks the same.  It sticks to you in layers and it's no use trying to shake it off or snarling. 

Well, OK, what do we have?  Khutsiev, the Rector of the Moscow Film Institute, has been sacked - but that's no surprise; from now on the Rectors of Moscow and St Petersburg Universities will be appointed by the President - ditto.  Elections, choice -these are not for Russians.  What they are used to is shaking things off, snarling at people and getting more and more stuck.   Even the air is sticky and when it finally settles on my balcony it's black.

I've just come back from London, where I hadn't been for 5 years, though before that I went every year for 4 years running.  This time I was asked the same old question: ‘Did you see Boris?'  Boris? Which Boris?  Berezovsky, of course.  I've never seen him.  No one asked me if I'd seen Abramovich.  For some London is Proputinsk, a town that has been bought up from top to bottom.  For others it's Antiputinsk, which is quietly stagnating.

Sasha and I are in a red double-decker bus, talking Russian.  Suddenly the man sitting in front of us turns round and silently proffers 2 Russian newspapers published in London.  In one of them I read a review of a book called "Londongrad" by 2 British authors.  They write about Russian oligarchs with sarcasm and revulsion, saying they behave as though they've bought up the whole world and everything in it.  Perhaps the book's about more than oligarchs, but if so the review doesn't say so.  But the small ads in these two newspapers speak volumes: there's a bed to let in a room that is already occupied, or a room in a flat, offers to fix up jobs for cleaners or dustmen, but the pay is so poor that it makes the 300,000 Russians in London sound like poor folk from a Dickens novel. 

London is cheaper than Moscow, though.  Food, fruit and veg, restaurants, shoes and clothes. When Russians arrive they go rushing round the shops, as they used to in the old days, buying up clothes and shoes for a year or two ahead.  They stagger away with as much as they can carry, buying an extra suitcase on the way.  While one social group would call this consumer prostitution, the other would just call it shopping.

In the 90s the difference between Moscow and London was huge. Then the "petrotyphoon" happened in Russia and made it seem as though we were twins - the same elegant selection of expensive boutiques, stars on tour, houses with towers that almost looked like castles and more Bentleys in Moscow than in London. 

As for the famous lawns, Russians understood that it wasn't a question of them having to grow for 300 years, but that looking after even small squares and courtyards properly was impossible, so how the endless parks and gardens in London were kept mown was completely beyond most of us.  In Soviet times there were notices everywhere «No walking on the grass», but this made no difference at all:  any place that wasn't asphalted over was soon reduced to wasteland or became overgrown with weeds and was awash with runny mud during the rainy season.

In London it rains all the time, but the grass is green and so thick that it swallows up the dew, even though people lie on it, play football and have picnics.  When Russians have picnics the result is a multi-layered pile of rubbish, where the debris seems to resolve back into the earth all on its own.  Look at it like this: in Russia things happen of their own accord in one way - in England in a different way.

When I was in London I met up with the former British Ambassador to Russia, Sir Roderic Lyne.  We had made friends when he was working in Moscow.  We met in London on the last day of his contract with TNK-BP. This marked the end of his connection with Russia. Although he speaks excellent Russian and knows and loves the country he considers that  there's just nothing more he can do there.  Now that the pillar of Russian society has resurrected itself as that «vertical of power», one might say that the heap of dirt has reached a critical point where the awfulness has become all-enveloping.  This goes for all things Russian - not just investments and tourism, but even literature (almost nothing being published any more).

Professor Valentina Polukhina has written several books about Joseph Brodsky and set up a fund for Russian poets in London.  She complains that invitations from universities have dried up - no one wants to hear about Russian literature any more.  Publishers can't sell Russian books, though they could before.  This started before the economic crisis, which has simply reinforced the trend, ensuring that anything considered non-essential is cut.  Things Russian appear to be among the non-essentials.  Except, perhaps, for theatre:  Chekhov still reigns supreme and a few modern playwrights (usually translated by Sasha Dugdale).  Valentina's husband, Daniel Weissbort, has lived in England since he was a young man.  He is one of the best poet-translators, but he is still doing translations for himself, rather than for publication.  At the moment he's translating Henry Sapgir and Igor Kholin;  before that it was Inna Lisnyanskaya.  He's translated a lot. 

I saw Daniel and Valentina several times:  once they invited me to the Athenaeum Club.

In England they keep a strict division between 3 areas of life:  work, home life and «social life», which happens in pubs and clubs.  Pubs, as their name suggests, are public places. But each one has its regulars, so it's not a casual matter which one you go to.  I went with Zinovy Zinik to his pub, where there were hugs and kisses all round, but we had to leave, as there was no room.  «So what?» say I «We'll go to another. There are lots of pubs and cafes round here.»  «It's not the same», said Zinovy crossly.  It was as if I'd been invited to his house and suggested that it would be just as good to go and see the neighbours instead.  So we went to his house. 

He said all the same things:  modern Russian literature doesn't seem to be written for anyone in particular, because there is no class of Russian society left that reads any more.  I mean class in the everyday, rather than the Marxist, sense. Zinovy writes more and more in English now, though two books of his essays have been published in Russia. 

I argued that there are classes in Russia.  Some people read about glamorous celebrity lifestyles, usually in brightly-coloured shiny publications full of English words and expressions which seem to suggest that there's nothing to choose between Moscow and London.  Others prefer reading matter of a more nationalistic kind, with elements of criminality, Orthodox religion or other rubbish, in which life is nightmarish and hopeless.  Here the underlying message is «That's Russia - take it or leave it». The rest of the world can just take a running jump.  The first group are optimists, the second pessimists. 

You hear nothing from the others - they are the rustling in the garden.  «Why is there only one book which makes sense of what is going on in Russia?» asks Zinik.  He means Vladimir Sorokin's «The Day of the Oprichnik».  It isn't the only one, of course, but to Zinovy in his Londongrad the others are no more than the rustling in the garden.  From that English garden you just can't hear our discourse any more, any more than you can hear our problems and what's going on in our society.

Every pub has its own atmosphere and you can see the different types of people in them at a glance.  I always drink a pint of cider, as I don't like beer.  In the clubs there are no outsiders, so they're completely homogeneous.  The Athenaeum is a big old building and everyone is respectable.  Wearing a white shirt, jacket and tie is de rigueur.  Daniel's a member, but Valentina is not, so she can't go into the rooms with «Members only» on the door.  Women weren't allowed into the club before. But Margaret Thatcher came when she was Prime Minister and they couldn't really ask her to leave.  Since then women have been allowed to become members too.  Britain has emerged from the Roman Empire, outgrown it, as it were. So for them what the gods can do, cattle can too.  Russia is still trying to catch up, insisting on the opposite,  Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.  But as long as we stick by the maxim «one country - one leader», our intellectual horizon is hugely constrained. It offers only one point of view - for or against. 

I was taken to the Athenaeum because Brodsky had been there and Seamus Heaney is a member - poets are part of the scene.  I put on a black dress and Sasha specially bought a white shirt.   However, when we went to another club with Mark Grigoryan we dressed normally, like everyone else.  Jeans, teeshirt and jacket. It's a club for journalists who work in the trouble spots of the world - hence its name, Frontline Club.  One of the Athenaeum's valuable relics is an old button from the uniform jacket of the club, whereas at  the Frontline it's a mobile telephone shattered by a bullet.  It was at the Frontline Club that Alexander Litvinenko held his last press-conference, when he announced that he knew who had killed Anna Politkovskaya. This is the place in London where Russia is discussed often, with acute interest, like Iraq and Afghanistan.   Their relics are spattered with dirt now hallowed, as journalists from all over the place have paid for it with their lives in a variety of dirty wars.  The mobile telephone and the dirty wallet with bullet holes have saved lives.  Mark himself suffered an attempt on his life and still has the grenade splinters in his body to show for it.  He left Yerevan and now works for the BBC, making brief sorties to trouble spots.  Once, he too was a student of literature, but the front suddenly seemed more appealing than life behind the lines.  London is a haven for them all.  Now that figurehead of Russian politics - Chief Sanitary Inspector Onishchenko - has banned schoolchildren from travelling there, to prevent them from becoming too accustomed to London at a tender age.  After all, it doesn't take much to get used to the good things in life.

Since I was here before Norman Foster's appetising glass gherkin has gone up and Renzo Piano's bright orange buildings are nearing completion in the historic centre.  They fit so well into classical London that one can only feel they should somehow have been there before.  English literature too has moved on from the looking glass into real life:  Alice in Wonderland, Tolkien and even (when we've finished focusing on literature) Potter.

Oleg Yankovsky burst on to the Soviet cinema scene in the late 1960s.  He was still a young provincial actor, living on the Volga and working in the theatre in Saratov.  He was given the rare break that a provincial actor can only dream of when he happened to meet the famous director from Moscow, Vladimir Basov. The theatre was on tour in Lvov in Western Ukraine.   Basov was preparing to make a new film about spies, "Shield and Sword".  He was at an ordinary restaurant with his colleagues and was attracted by Yankovsky's "Aryan looks".   Oleg was given the opportunity to play the role of a German officer who loses faith in the ideas of the Third Reich. When the film was released in 1968, the 24-year-old Yankovsky woke up to find that he was famous.  Mosfilm directors rushed to employ him.  He had made his mark in the film industry, but he was noticed by the theatre world too.  He had many offers, but chose the famous Lenkom Theatre and its director Mark Zakharov

Yankovsky had joined one of the best theatres in the country. Soon Moscow audiences were not just going to the Lenkom, but to see Oleg Yankovsky, whatever the play.  This thin, tall handsome man with light hair and mysterious slanty eyes captured women's hearts. Yankovsky was capable of wonderful silences on film, which is a rare skill, but he also spoke beautifully. His phrases from films and plays have become quotes. Just take: "A serious face is not a sign of intelligence, gentlemen. All the stupid things in the world have been done with this expression. Smile, gentlemen, smile!"  These words were spoken by his famous character Baron Munchhausen in the film "The Very Same Munchhausen".

Yankovsky is perhaps for Russian culture what Marcello Mastroianni was for Italian culture. Both of them played the hero of their time - a restless intellectual in conflict with himself and his surroundings. Despite the 20-year age difference, the creative and biographical parallels are clear. Both studied and trained with great masters. In the 1970s, Yankovsky acted in the company of the Moscow theatre guru Mark Zakharov, while Mastroianni began his career in the 1950s in a theatre that was headed by the great Luchino Visconti. Yankovsky played Gorchakov, the tormented writer in Andrei Tarkovsky's film "Nostalgia".  Mastroianni's character, the writer Giovanni, has almost exactly the same feelings in Michelangelo Antonioni's "Night": the dark night of the creative soul, the sunset of feelings and the twilight of habits.  In the film by the cult director of the 1980s Roman Balayan "Flights in Dream and Reality", Yankovsky plays a restless 40-year-old intellectual Sergei Makarov, who is reviewing his life.   Wife, lover, work, friends....nothing gives him satisfaction.  Mastroianni's character, director Guido Anselmi, in Fellini's film "8 1/2" is the same. Guido is at a creative dead-end and is looking for sources of inspiration, but his wife and lover only hinder his concentration.

What about Yankovsky in Mark Zakharov's TV film "The Very Same Munchhausen"? He's a charming inventor who believes all his stories, which means that these stories have the habit of coming true from time to time. You can't help recalling the society reporter Marcello in Fellini's "La dolce vita", who tells tales and scandalous stories from the life of the so-called "restaurant society". Marcello is just as smart and ironic as Yankovsky's Munchhausen.

Yankovsky and Mastroianni are among the few actors who could work in all genres: comedy, drama, tragedy. Mastroianni is convincing in the role of an ordinary Italian - a farmer, a worker or a taxi driver. Yankovsky is just as convincing as an ordinary Russian: a mechanic, bandit or soldier. Both artists could act subtly and convey emotions using a meagre palette.

Oleg and Marcello were far from meeting Hollywood standards, but they enchanted millions of women with their charm and spontaneity.

Perhaps the only area in which Yankovsky surpassed his Italian colleague was his portrayal of Russian leaders on the Lenkom stage and on film.  He played Tsar Nicholas II (the film "The Killer of the Tsar"), Peter the Great (the play "Balakirev the Jester") and Lenin (the play "Revolutionary Etude").  In this play he wore no make-up, an unprecedented experiment in the Soviet period, when the "idol" Lenin was always depicted with a beard and polished bald pate.

Hence the special attitude to Yankovsky, who played thinking people full of contradictions, something the Russian intelligentsia has always loved, rather than self-satisfied boors or role-model heroes on stage.

Yankovsky's work with Andrei Tarkovsky is a special page in his creative biography.  The filming of the famous "Nostalgia" in Italy and Moscow is the stuff of legends.   According to one version of the story, Tarkovsky invited Oleg to the shoot, but didn't schedule him for filming or even make contact with him for a long time. Yankovsky became very anxious hanging around for weeks in a small Italian town with nothing to do. This was Tarkovsky's way of helping Oleg find the frame of mind he needed to play the main character, the writer Gorchakov. "This was the nostalgia in the hearts of Gorchakov and Tarkovsky. Yearning for a good conscience, for a miracle, for faith," critics wrote later, when they had seen the great film-maker's last masterpiece.  Tarkovsky knew Yankovsky well:  in 1974 he had played the director's father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, in the autobiographical film "The Mirror".  The duo could have continued working together, had their collaboration not been cut short by Tarkovsky's early death.

Oleg Yankovsky had a very fortunate acting career and could still surprise his fans at 65.   Early in 2009 there were rumours in the press that he was ill.  Many people were upset to hear this, but no one thought that the end was so close. He was in excellent form, and in the year before his death he appeared in two major projects. In director Sergei Solovyov's film "Anna Karenina" Yankovsky played Anna's husband Alexei Karenin, and in Pavel Lungin's film about Ivan the Terrible, "The Tsar", he played Metropolitan Filipp. These were excellent works, which were released only quite recently, after his death.  People were openly in tears at the screenings.  Colleagues and friends were as upset as if they had just lost a close relative. This was all genuine and unfeigned.

The doctors weren't able to save Yankovsky, as he was discovered to have cancer of the pancreas at an advanced stage. He went to Germany for expensive treatment with the German oncologist professor Martin Schuler, a specialist in therapeutic methods of cancer treatment, but even that didn't help. Shortly before his death, Oleg returned to Russia.  He wanted to take his leave of the audience and went on stage in spite of terrible pain.  Audience affection for Oleg Yankovsky was at its peak in his last performance.   It was in Gogol's "The Marriage" and the retired sailor Zhevakin - comical, ridiculous, with big bushy eyebrows - came on to the stage to applause. This was on 18 February 2009.  Oleg Yankovsky said goodbye to audiences for good that day, and on 20 May the Russian media reported the sad news of his death.

Surprisingly enough, the press and journalists covered Yankovsky's personal life very tactfully, and especially his last days. Of course, his family and his favourite theatre were his bulwark, but not only them. His reputation of a person with principles and excellent taste in choosing roles contributed to his image. Oleg never gave any cause for gossip, never played politics, and tried to avoid dubious contacts with the government. In other words, he never sold his face, as did some of his more calculating colleagues in the hope of getting some payback from contacts with the ruling elite.  Yankovsky never cosied up to people in power so as to be in the eye of the public, the press or influential officials. He got everything from his audiences, who went to his performances and always gave the actor a standing ovation when he came out to take his bow.

The last time Oleg was applauded was on the day of his funeral, when his coffin was carried along Malaya Dmitrovka street, past the Lenkom theatre. Moscow had not seen a funeral like this since the funeral of poet and musician Vladimir Vysotsky, who died almost 30 years ago. Entire offices took time off work to say goodbye to Oleg. Elderly people began "lining up for Yankovsky" at 5 a.m. On this day, ordinary people did not hide their tears, and neither did famous artists and public figures, for whom the name of Yankovsky meant only one thing - a great Russian artist. This is in the Russian tradition: if you fall in love with your idol, this love will remain with you all your life.

As fate would have it, Oleg Yankovsky learned that he had become a people's artist of the USSR some days before the collapse of the Soviet Union. His name was the last on this list of awards. Oleg used to point out ironically that the first person to receive this Soviet title was Konstantin Stanislavsky, the great theatre director and teacher, and the last was himself.  He would make fun of himself by saying "Look who they started with and who they ended with!"