in Pavlovsk, restoring the palace after a fire. In 1805 Cameron finally retired; his tenure at the Admiralty passed to Andreyan Zakharov. Lukomsky noted that Cameron, who once executed Catherine's soaring dreams, was hardly interested in building barracks and repairing gateways. Private life Cameron's personality remains a "shadowy figure": being "proud, aloof and difficult", he had a talent for alienating people. He did not participate in the social life of the English diaspora in Saint Petersburg; he had few Russian friends, did not speak Russian and was disliked for his attitude of "English superiority". In 1784 Cameron married Catherine Busch, daughter of the imperial gardener John Busch. They had a daughter, Mary, however, her birth has not been evidenced by church records. Mary Cameron, engaged to James Grange, left Russia in 1798. Grange returned to Russia in 1803, and, according to Anthony Cross, could have helped Cameron's career revival in 1803–1805. By 1839 the Granges had seven surviving children. During retirement Cameron and his wife lived in Paul's favourite palace, Saint Michael's Castle. The redundant and still incomplete castle was converted to living quarters and housed up to 900 residents, including the Camerons and future field marshal Diebitsh. Cameron died in 1812, before Napoleon's invasion of Russia; his widow secured a pension from the Russian Government, sold Cameron's library and either returned to England or died in Saint Petersburg. References and notes Sources Biographies of Cameron The first comprehensive English biography of Cameron was written by Georgy Lukomsky, veteran of Russian neoclassical revival school, and published in 1943 in England with introduction by David Talbot Rice. Nikolay Lanceray had compiled substantial material on Cameron earlier, in the 1920s. It was lost after his arrest, apart from the fragments used in his book on Vincenzo Brenna, first printed in 2006. In the last quarter of the 20th century Anthony Glenn Cross researched Cameron's life as part of the British diaspora in Saint Petersburg and tracked his family connections; John Martin Robinson contributed studies of Cameron's early career in England. A definitive modern biography of Cameron, The empress and the architect, was published by Dmitry Shvidkovsky in English in 1996 (most recent Russian edition: 2008). Cameron's concise biography in the fourth edition of Howard Colvin's Biographical Dictionary of British Architects cites all the English sources listed above. Also includes: Biographies of contemporary artists Also includes: Vityazeva, V. A., Modzalevskaya, M. A. (2006,