Last night, images of the Russian–German war in the documentary From Nuremberg to Nuremberg. Leningrad, 1941: the heart-stopping courage of the Soviets, their almost mystical resistance. “My father was decorated by Stalin.” The pain I feel at having known and lost an entire world, at having glimpsed something I could never have imagined before, because it had never been embodied, in a face, words, a pair of hands: the communist ideal which rallied men and women in Leningrad, in Stalingrad, and was passed on to that blond green-eyed boy, who had no sense of betraying anything or anyone when he yearned for Guy Laroche ties and suits by Saint Laurent.