Dixon's characterization of Hughes's scholarship as a 'self-denying empiricism' and 'not concept-driven' (5) may also be applied to the works in Personality and Place, which do not attempt large-scale statements about Russian culture or forefront theoretical or methodological problems but focus on 'the shifting meanings attributable to particular settings' and on the specific materials under consideration. These interests have been cleverly distilled by the editor of the volume under review, Simon Dixon, Hughes's colleague at the SSEES and a leading scholar of Catherinean Russia, as a focus on 'personality and place,' reflecting Hughes's 'interests in the kaleidoscopic variety of individual motivations and the shifting meanings attributable to particular settings' (13). , the multivalent, disparate strands that make up the texture of human culture' (22).

As Robin Miller-Guilland writes, 'In her many shorter articles, we find a tireless enthusiast for generally disregarded corners of history. the Great: A Biography, as well as for her interest in material culture as a primary historical source-particularly architecture but also art, clothing, fashion, icons, and ritual. Hughes is probably best known for her pioneering biographies Sophia, Regent of Russia, 1657-1704 and the monumental Peter. This collection of articles is a tribute to the memory and rich intellectual legacy of the late Lindsey Hughes (1949-2007), professor of Russian history at London University's School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (SSEES, now part of University College London ).

Catherine the Great by Simon Dixon