War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (BBC Radio)

The novel is set during the Napoleonic wars, the era which forms the backdrop of Tolstoy’s painstakingly detailed depiction of early 19th century Tsarist Russia under Alexander I: her archetypes and anti-heroes. Through his masterful development of characters Pierre, Andrew, Natasha, Nicholas, Mary and the rest, War and Peace examines the absurdity, hypocrisy, and shallowness of war and aristocratic society. It all comes to a climax during the Battle of Borodino. Initially Tolstoy’s friends including Ivan S. Turgenev and Gustave Flaubert decided that the novels’ ‘formlessness’ weakened the overall potential for its success, but they were soon proved wrong. Almost one hundred years after his death, in January of 2007, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1878) and War and Peace were placed on Time magazine’s ten greatest novels of all time, first and third place respectively.

A star cast of thirty-five includes:
Leo McKern as General Kutuzov,
Emily Mortimer as Natasha Rostov,
Simon Russell Beale as Pierre Bezuhov,
Jonathan Firth as Nikolai Rostov,
Nicola Pagett as Nathalie Rostov
Amanda Redman as Helens Kuragin.

This unique, full-cast dramatisation contains over two hours of specially composed music and captures the full atmosphere of Tolstoy's masterpiece.


About the Author:

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian author, essayist and philosopher. One of the greatest of all novelists. Tolstoy's major works include "War and Peace" (1863-69) and "Anna Karenina" (1875-77).

"In historical events great men - so-called - are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity." (from War and Peace)

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Another version (Read by Frederick Davidson)