A. There have always been cultural, political and commercial connections between Britain and Russia that can take us deep into the history of these two countries. Traces of some of them can be seen in the streets of their capitals  — be that the names of the streets themselves, the buildings standing on them or the monuments erected to outstanding representatives of these two nations, both real and fictional.

B. There are at least four streets in London that will remind you of Russia. Bayswater, one of the most beautiful areas of London, is home to Moscow Road and St. Petersburg Place  — two streets that commemorate Tsar Alexander I’s visit to England in 1814. Czar Street in Deptford is the area where Peter the Great stayed in 1698 during his Grand Embassy, to take a better look at the London shipyards; while Muscovy Street near the Tower of London marks the spot of Peter the Great’s favourite pub in London.

C. Neither Moscow, nor St. Petersburg can boast of a «London Street». However, a similar function is carried out by Angliyskaya Naberezhnaya  — English Embankment  — historically one of the most fashionable streets in St. Petersburg, where the British Embassy and the English church used to be located before the Revolution. And as for the Revolution, it was from the English Embankment that at 2 am on October 25, 1917, the gunshot from the Aurora sent a signal to storm the Winter Palace.

D. Still, Moscow also has a couple of streets with English names. Brusov Lane is named after a Scottish dynasty whose most famous representative  — James Bruce  — was Peter the Great’s close friend and advisor. It was James Bruce who accompanied Peter the Great on his Grand Embassy to England. A brilliant scholar and scientist, James Bruce was in charge of book printing in Russia, which led many illiterate people to believe he practiced black magic.

E. Another Moscow street with an English name is Gamsonovsky pereulok or Hampson Lane, located not far from the Danilovsky monastery. The Hampsons were a large British family that moved to Russia in the early 19^thcentury and founded a velvet factory on the Moskva River. Neither the Hampson family, not their factory can be found in Moscow today, but the street name still tells the story of the long-forgotten past.

F. One of the most recognizable sky-scrapers in modern London is the so called Gherkin  — a torpedo-shaped building in the City, London’s financial center, that opened in 2004 and immediately won the Emporis Skyscraper Award. Few people know that the architect’s inspiration for the steel structure of the skyscraper was Vladimir Shukhov’s diagrid system used in the Shukhov Radio Tower in Moscow.

G. Perhaps the only «English» statue in Moscow is a sculptural composition of Sherlock Holms and Dr. Watson which opened in 2007 next to the British Embassy for the 120^thanniversary since the publication of the first story about the great detective by Conan Doyle. «These heroes have long become the personification of Great Britain in the eyes of Russians and a recognized symbol of Russian-British friendship,» wrote the British Ambassador on its opening.

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Текст №6. (Чтение. Задание №10)