By the time Alexandra Tolstoy was born her father had written most of his great novels. She is his last surviving child and the twelfth of his 13 children.

In this film she movingly recalls the years she was Tolstoy's secretary and confidant. Life for the Tolstoy family on their country estate south of Moscow was often turbulent. Alexandra stood in the middle of the battle which developed between her parents, and tried to protect her father against the excesses of his wife's hysteria. In 1910, tired and sick, Tolstoy took the step he had contemplated for so many years - and left for the Caucasus to search for peace and solitude. He fell ill on the way and was put to bed in a station-master's cottage.
Alexandra was with him during those last few days as he died.
(Tolstoy's daughter talks of her father: page 8)