Alan Yentob takes an epic train ride through Tolstoys Russia examining
how Russias great novelist became her great troublemaker.In this
programme he reveals a difficult and troubled youth obsessed with sex
and gambling who turned writer while serving as a soldier in Chechnya
and the Crimea. His experiences on the frontline eventually fed into
War and Peace a book now recognised as the gold standard by which all
other novels are judged. They also triggered his conversion to
outspoken pacifist.Alans expedition takes him to the Tatar city of
Kazan where Tolstoy was a teenager the siege of Sevastopol on the
Black Sea and Imperial St Petersburg as well as the idyllic Tolstoy
country estate the writers cradle and grave and home throughout his
passionate but brutal 48-year marriage to Sofya - a marriage that
began with rape produced 13 children and ended with desertion and
denial.Contributors include Tolstoys great great grandson Vladimir
Tolstoy AN Wilson and author of a new Tolstoy biography Rosamund
Bartlett.
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