Yelets

In Lipetsk Oblast, the team visited half a dozen towns in as many days, where they sought out both the well-known – the sky-blue, golden-domed cathedral in Zadonsk – and the unknown – in Chaplygin, a cheese-making workshop; in Yelets, a museum in the house of the Soviet composer Tikhon Khrennikov; in the middle of nowhere, a small falcon reserve.

In the small town of Yelets we knocked on the door of a monastery and were invited in to join a group of Russian Orthodox priests celebrating Christmas.

Castles and villages were burned; the nobles who did not escape were cut to pieces, and among others old Pan Yelets, a former servant and friend of the Vishnyevetskis.

The pursuit of a flying enemy carried Timur into the tributary provinces of Russia; a duke of the reigning family was made prisoner amid the ruins of his capital; and Yelets, by the pride and ignorance of the orientals, might easily be confounded with the genuine metropolis of the nation.