Nigel Fountain

There was a hint, I thought, or wished, of a Russified Jack London in the childhood and adolescence of Mikhail Kalashnikov. The expanses of Siberia standing in for the Pacific north-west perhaps; there was an old rifle for hunting in the woods; the mysterious gift of an American Browning revolver, to be wondered at, taken apart and cherished; an artisan’s fascination with mechanical things, writes Nigel Fountain.