Russian Culture Is Flowering In London

Hillary Clinton may not like Russia, even though her husband has been known to line his pockets with a few roubles, but lesser mortals in the UK are less hostile to this colossus which was once our enemy but should now be our friend. Whatever the state of relations between our two nations, some individual Russians have boosted the UK economy in no uncertain terms. However much the Russian-based Internet Research Agency spent on Facebook advertisements in the run-up to the US Presidential elections, this was dwarfed by the money spent by certain Russian “oligarchs” in the English capital. From 2003, the Russian-born Roman Abramovich has invested heavily in Chelsea, one of the country’s leading football clubs. From the available public information, this ownership does not appear to have benefited him financially, so why does he do it? Who cares? Chelsea fans don’t!

In 2009, Evgeny Lebedev bought the Evening Standard, the major London evening newspaper and one of the country’s major regional newspapers. The paper was founded in 1827 as The Standard, a skimpy broadsheet which sold for a hefty 7d. (A hundred years later the same money would have bought you a kilogramme of sugar). Mr Lebedev’s newspaper is free, supported by advertising.

Away from the business of sport and publishing, we have Russian culture. While its charismatic leader Mr Putin is still not very popular here, Pushkin is in heavy demand.

Alexander Pushkin was born in 1799, and is universally recognised as one of Russia’s greatest literary figures. Pushkin House is a registered charity based in Bloomsbury. Founded by Russian émigrés and their supporters in 1954, it is dedicated to Pushkin and all Russian culture. From January 28 to February 2, it will be hosting its inaugural Festival Of Russian Music.

Puskin House: centre of Russian culture in London.

The Eurasian Creative Guild (London) is a much newer organisation with a similar though slightly broader remit. Founded by Marat Akhmejanov, it meets at the Russian Cultural Centre in High Street Kensington and publishes a glossy magazine, OCA. This year it launched the Eurasian Film Festival, which was held in Romford. The next one will be held from May 24-30. Details can be found on the dedicated website: http://eurasianfilmfestival.uk/ in English and Russian.

If that is too far ahead, the Nutcracker is currently playing at the London Coliseum until January 5, and The Sleeping Beauty at the Royal Opera House until January 16. This famous ballet runs to three hours with two intervals, and tickets are a very reasonable £30.

Is D’Andre Lane Innocent?

In October 1994, Susan Smith told police in Union, South Carolina she had been carjacked by a man who drove off with her two young sons on the back seat. Nine days later, she led them to the lake into which she had driven the vehicle, drowning both boys. This horrific tale has been thoroughly documented, and Smith has been the subject of countless hours of viewing. Right from the start there were problems with her story, but every day, police all over the world hear both improbable stories that turn out to be true and plausible ones that are outright lies.

In December 2011, D’Andre Lane of Detroit told a similarly implausible story in which he was carjacked by not one but two men, who drove off with his two year old daughter Bianca Jones on the back seat. Like Smith, Lane was charged with and convicted of murder, but that is where the similarities end, because in Lane’s case there is no confession, no body, and no real motive. Smith murdered her sons because they stood in the way of what she saw as a rosy future with the son of her employer. It has been claimed Lane beat his daughter to death because she wet the bed, but the evidence for this is weak at best.

Lane is no angel, to put it mildly, he has several convictions including for violence, and has served hard time. He is also a father of seven. By seven different women!

He failed a polygraph, and a cadaver dog is alleged to have detected traces of death in his car, which was found abandoned a mile from where he claimed to have been hijacked. Polygraphs are junk science, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. As for the dog, did it actually lead the police to a body?

On the plus side, Lane had returned to college and was trying to turn his life around. And there are witnesses who claim his daughter was alive after she was alleged to have been murdered, including one who claims the girl was kidnapped by someone close to home.

Lane lost an appeal against conviction in 2014, but two years ago, his attorney told True Crime Daily he too had evidence Bianca was still alive, and he is not the only one.

Above: D’Andre Lane with the daughter he is alleged to have murdered. But what happened to her body?

Although they have not been very active of late, Lane’s supporters can be found on Twitter. The big question has to be, if Lane really did murder his daughter, where in Hell did he dump the body? He had a limited time frame in which to dispose of it, and in cases like this, the police usually go the extra mile and then some, but there has been not a trace of Bianca Jones. It appears too that once they were satisfied in their own minds that Lane’s carjacking story didn’t hold up, the police didn’t bother to pursue other lines of investigation.