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  • Published: 15 April 2017
  • ISBN: 9781785294563
  • Imprint: BBC CD
  • Format: Audio CD
  • Length: 10 hr 15 min
  • Narrators: Lesley Manville, John Hurt, Paterson Joseph, Harriet Walter
  • RRP: $49.99

War And Peace




Paterson Joseph, John Hurt, Lesley Manville and Harriet Walter are among the cast of BBC Radio 4's full-cast dramatisation from 2015.

Paterson Joseph, John Hurt, Lesley Manville and Harriet Walter are among the stellar cast of this landmark BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Leo Tolstoy’s epic saga.

‘Tolstoy’s imagined world is recreated on air brilliantly by the extraordinary cast’ The Spectator

One of the greatest novels of all time, War and Peace explores historical, social, ethical and religious issues on a scale never before attempted in fiction, and reflects the panorama of life at every level of Russian society during the 19th Century.

Adapted for radio by Timberlake Wertenbaker, this riveting, wide-ranging drama follows the fortunes of four Russian aristocratic families during the Napoleonic War. Told in flashback over ten episodes, it moves from fashionable society soirées in St Petersburg and Moscow to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino, as protagonists Pierre, Natasha, Marya and Nikolai describe to their children the events that shaped their lives and those of every Russian who lived through this turbulent time.

First broadcast on New Year's Day 2015, this dynamic full-cast dramatisation features specially composed music by Stephen Warbeck. It stars Paterson Joseph as Pierre, Phoebe Fox as Natasha, Natasha Little as Marya and Sam Reid as Nikolai, part of a stunning cast including Alun Armstrong, Simon Russell Beale and Roger Allam.

Duration: 10 hours approx.

  • Published: 15 April 2017
  • ISBN: 9781785294563
  • Imprint: BBC CD
  • Format: Audio CD
  • Length: 10 hr 15 min
  • Narrators: Lesley Manville, John Hurt, Paterson Joseph, Harriet Walter
  • RRP: $49.99

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About the author

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy was born in central Russia in 1828. He studied Oriental languages and law (although failed to earn a degree in the latter) at the University of Kazan, and after a dissolute youth eventually joined an artillery regiment in the Caucasus in 1851. He took part in the Crimean War, and the Sebastopol Sketches that emerged from it established his reputation. After living for some time in St Petersburg and abroad, he married Sophie Behrs in 1862 and they had thirteen children. The happiness this brought him gave him the creative impulse for his two greatest novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Later in life his views became increasingly radical as he gave up his possessions to live a simple peasant life. After a quarrel with his wife he fled home secretly one night to seek refuge in a monastery. He became ill during this dramatic flight and died at the small railway station of Astapovo in 1910.

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Praise for War And Peace

Tolstoy’s imagined world is recreated on air brilliantly by the extraordinary cast

The Spectator

The cast is extraordinary, but pre-eminent is Harriet Walter in a masterclass of apparently effortless radio acting

The Stage