Aleksandr Pushkin continues to exert an enormous influence on Russian culture and literature more than a century and a half after his death. The impact he has made bears witness to the enormous scope of his talent as well as its continuing appeal to succ...

The Russian poet and prose writer Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837) ranks as the country's greatest poet. He not only brought Russian poetry to its highest excellence but also had a decisive influence on Russian literature in the 19th and 20th cen...

THE RAIL industry has unveiled a saviour to make us love travelling by train again - and he comes equipped with little more than the modern equivalent of a fob watch and whistle. The traditional stationmaster, a pillar of the community and ready...

Early years Francois Maurice Marie Mitterrand is born in 1916 in Jarnac in south-western France, the fifth child of a railway stationmaster. He is sent to Roman Catholic colleges and soon becomes active in a right-wing student fraternity. In 1937, Mitterrand graduates with...

Mitsutoshi Fukatsu has been with his wife for three decades, but their lives have grown apart. As a busy stationmaster in central Japan, he has usually come home only to eat, bathe and sleep.Now with retirement looming, the 56-year-old wants to get to know his...