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I ran along the track and saw two women in another carriage washing each other's faces with snow. Then I saw a big bronze bust of Marie Antoinette. The haughty face of this Queen seemed out of place here. I glanced inside the carriage and there were dozens of paintings, none of them were even covered, thrown on to the benches. I was furious at the lack of care.

But Kuchumov learned that the women were curators who had fled from Smolensk, where they had been given even less time than he had to evacuate their city's museums. He wrote: 'They told me that the bombing of Smolensk was devastating. The fascists just descended. Some were disguised as Soviet militiamen and Red Army soldiers. The trucks carrying these museum treasures had departed the ruins of the Smolensk as the Nazis poured into the streets. What is happening back in Leningrad?'

Kuchumov was fearful not only for his own comrades but also for the Amber Room that he had left behind. I thought of the Catherine Palace and those things I failed to pack and then I imagined vividly the tragedy of many Soviet towns, falling victim to the Nazis,' he wrote.

It still seemed surreal to Kuchumov as he had not yet seen any evidence of war. Passing through the heart of the Motherland, the curator watched Vladimir-on-the-Klyazma slip by, founded by the Grand Prince of Kiev, twice sacked by the Mongols although its citizens, famously, were never crushed. According to Kuchumov's diary, its golden domes were untouched: 'It smelled like something native. Something very Russian. Eight hundred years of our great history rushed involuntarily into my head.'

Then, on 5 July 1941, Kuchumov's train pulled up in the forested plains of the Volga basin, 550 miles south-east of St Petersburg, and there it was ordered to wait. Over three weeks later, Kuchumov at last gleaned some news from back home when a letter arrived by courier: '1 August, from Elena Nikolaievna Beliaeva, curator and party organizer, Leningrad, to Comrade Kuchumov.' Telemakov had copied this letter to the great curator. Airdrops and couriered mail would continue to reach pockets of Russia throughout the war and Kuchumov was the kind of man who threw nothing away. Beliaeva wrote: 'Everyone is now on trench duty. No families are left in the park. We are leaving treats behind for the fascists. Everybody is trying to be of good cheer.'

Within two weeks of writing this, the people of Leningrad would have dug 16,000 miles of trenches and 340 anti-tank ditches.

24 August, from Elena Nikolaievna Beliaeva, curator and party organizer, Leningrad, to Comrade Kuchumov. We are still evacuating Pushkin town [Tsarskoye Selo] and the palaces. Thousands of objects have now been saved. Now all walls are bare in the palaces. Yesterday in the Alexander Palace, I removed the last picture - The Kazaki of Nicholas I by Kruger [sic], which is rolled up. The situation is very hard for us. We carry out the work of guards, office workers, cleaners but nothing works.

Three days after this letter was written a night-time curfew was imposed as Leningrad became saturated by paranoia. Men with unkempt beards or unusual clothes were shot on sight or thrown into jail. Plots by saboteurs were randomly unearthed and spies were found everywhere. Fear strengthened the grip of the NKVD. And as Leningrad braced itself, Kuchumov's train was finally allowed to move on, edging another LOO miles east to Gorky. The curator found a radio and tuned into the news.

On I September, Hitler issued orders that Leningrad and its palaces be pounded. German bombers and artillery manoeuvred into place. Seven days later, parts of the city were engulfed in flames as the Luftwaffe levelled the Badaev food warehouse with napalm and phosphorus, incinerating all supplies in an inferno that burnt for three days, fuelled by reservoirs of fat and sugar. Huge grey plumes rose high above the Gulf of Finland, filling every nose in Leningrad with the smell of toffee apples, while heads and hearts faced up to imminent