Please join us for this memorable evening of exploring personal memories and cross-cultural histories with Anthony Cross!

Margaret and Anthony Cross, September 2026

This October, Anthony Cross – a legendary Professor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge and one of the distinguished patrons of our charity – celebrates his 90th birthday anniversary! We convey our heartfelt greetings and warmest wishes to Anthony and his other half Margaret Cross who also marked her special birthday earlier this month.

As part of preparation to this remarkable milestone, Anthony decided to make his enormous collection of Russia- related cultural memorabilia assembled over the lifetime- available for public acquisition in early 2027 via Cheffins auction. While working through his deposits of both physical items and memories Anthony selected some which kindly offered to share with us – unveiling their hidden stories which are closely linked to Anglo-Russian relations over the centuries.

Anthony Cross: “All my life I seem to have been a collector, and since my undergraduate days, especially of books, and not only Russian books, widely understood.  Beginning with my first visit to the Soviet Union in December 1959, I also gathered all sorts of things, particularly ephemera of the Soviet period – theatre programmes, postcards, posters,  even sweet wrappers. Although I acquired my first samovar back in the 1970s, it was only after my retirement in 2004 from the Cambridge Chair of Slavonic Studies, that I became a collector of seemingly all things Russian, and essentially of pre-Revolutionary Russia, and with the time to indulge this interest. I have a collection that encompasses silver, porcelain, bronzes, spoons and salts galore, engravings, coins, postcards, stamps etc etc.  It will form a sale to be conduced by the Cambridge auctioneers Cheffins in January 2027, but before it is dispersed I thought it might be interesting to offer the Russian-Speaking Society  a talk  that concentrates on some seven objects (it could have been a far greater number, and if there is time, there might be an eighth) that have Anglo-Russian connections, some obvious, some less so, some surprising. I will range from the eighteenth-century through nineteenth, almost  to the Russian Revolution.”

When: Tuesday 24 November 2026, 18:30-20:30 (GMT)
Where: Cameron Lecture Theatre, Fitzwilliam College, Storey’s Way, Cambridge CB3 0DG
Language: English
Format: In-person & Online via Zoom
In-person tickets: £12 — Standard (Zoom recording included); £8 — CamRuSS Members
Zoom tickets: £6 – Standard (Zoom recording included), free – CamRuSS Members
Please book via AllEvents

The talk will be followed by a wine reception

Prof Anthony Cross with his collection of Russian samovars

After student years at Cambridge and Harvard, Tony began his teaching career at the newly established University of East Anglia in 1964 and remained until 1981, when he became Roberts Professor of Russian at Leeds, before his election four years later to the Cambridge chair.  He was the third professor in the Department of Slavonic Studies until his retirement in 2004. (Professor Emma Widdis is only the fifth in the Department’s 75-year history.)
From the very beginning of his career Tony was very involved in the organisational and representative aspects of Russian studies. He served on the editorial board of many journals and the organising committees of national and international conferences and seminars. He was the founder of the Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia in 1967 and editor of its annual Newsletter for nearly twenty years. What he considers to be his final publication was ‘The SGECR: The First Fifty years’, published last November. In the 1970s he was a member of the British Council Interview Committee for postgraduate studentships in the Soviet Union. He was also Chairman of the British Academic Committee for Liaison with Soviet Archives, which performed an important service for British researchers in a very difficult period.
Since his first visit to Moscow and Leningrad as a Cambridge undergraduate in 1959, Tony has visited the Soviet Union and Russia some fifty times, including a year as a post-graduate scholar in Moscow University during the Cuban Crisis. He has a particular affinity with St Petersburg, where he became the first (and only one of two) foreigner to be awarded an Honorary Doctorate by The Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Pushkin House).
Tony was the first Professor of Russian elected to the British Academy in 1989 and has received several prizes for his published work. He has written and edited some twenty-five books, including exhibition catalogues, and has published over four hundred articles, notes and reviews; delivered some 200 invited lectures, consulted and curated exhibitions and historic publications. He has been a Patron of The Cambridge Russian-Speaking Society since 2020.