Dame Flora Robson reads extracts from the book recently published by Nadezhda Mandel stam, the widow of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam who died a victim of Stalin's purges in 1938. It describes their life from the poet's first arrest in 1934 to his second arrest and subsequent death in a prison camp.
Mrs Mandelstam still lives in Moscow and she wrote her book about six years ago. It has not been published in the USSR.
The extracts are introduced by KARL MILLER