Yesterday I was looking at coffee table photographs of Romanov era Russian empire. All aspects: town, gown; royalty, peasantry; native Russians, conquered subjects. Quite revealing, especially those which I think had undergone some firm of early colourisation, some had certainly been sweetened with colour, although actual colour is not unlikely - that's been possible almost since the first photographs were taken.

Three dimensions and colour enlivened those images I carry of the characters in those sweeping, prairie like novels of nineteenth century Russia: Goncharov's  Prince of indecision and idleness - Oblomov; the claustrophobia of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, the sweat and neurosis of living in a casually indifferent, often brutal St Petersburg; as a counterpoint, some happier stories of Chekhov; and what I've always conceived of Tolstoy's rural Russia.

And yet, the smock clad, long, straggling wispy bearded peasant farmer look came up this morning as    I caught up on a day old edition of the Guardian and an article about Dorset cider making. There was a photograph of four men, a cider pub landlord, along with his staff, staring straight into the camera lens in the manner and style of those Russian farm workers I was looking at yesterday. Is that a recognised Dorset look? Is it intentional? Even ironic?