by Leo Tolstoy
2, ' Pierre inherits a Fortune and Prince Andrew goes to the War'
A serial reading by Eric Gillett
The first instalment of Tolstoy's great novel, broadcast on Monday, introduced listeners to two of its several ' heroes ': the hobbledehoy Pierre, illegitimate son of the immensely wealthy old Count Bezukhov, and the rather older and more self-possessed
Prince Andrew Bolkonsky , son of an eccentric old general, Prince Nicholas Bolkonsky. Both these characters, strikingly unlike as they are, contain a great deal of self-portraiture. Similarly Prince Nicholas was drawn from Tolstoy's maternal grandfather and Andrew's sister, Princess Marya, from his own mother. The period is 1805.