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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Arts series edited and presented by Alan Yentob.

The biggest names from the world of art, film, music, literature and dance. Alan Yentob gets close up with those shaping today's cultural world.

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imagine...: Summer 2011: The Trouble with Tolstoy

Alan Yentob

Ross Wilson

Fiona Morris

imagine...: Summer 2011: The Trouble with Tolstoy: Part 1: At War with Himself

At War with Himself

Part 1 Part 1: At War with Himself

Summer 2011

BBC One - imagine..., Summer 2011, The Trouble with Tolstoy, At War with Himself

Alan Yentob looks back at Tolstoy's youth, and his time spent as a soldier in Chechnya.

Alan Yentob journeys through Tolstoy's Russia, examining how the country's great novelist became its great troublemaker, first looking back at his youth.

Alan Yentob takes an epic train ride through Tolstoy's Russia, examining how Russia's great novelist became her great troublemaker.

In this first of two programmes, he reveals a difficult and troubled youth, obsessed with sex and gambling, who turned writer while serving as a soldier in Chechnya and the Crimea. His experiences on the frontline eventually fed into War and Peace, a book now recognised as, 'the gold standard by which all other novels are judged'. They also triggered his conversion to outspoken pacifist. 

Alan's expedition takes him to the Tatar city of Kazan, where Tolstoy was a teenager, the siege of Sevastopol on the Black Sea and Imperial St Petersburg, as well as the idyllic Tolstoy country estate, the writer's cradle and grave, and home throughout his passionate but brutal 48-year marriage to Sofya - a marriage that began with rape, produced 13 children and ended with desertion and denial. 

Contributors include Tolstoy's great great grandson Vladimir Tolstoy, AN Wilson and author of a Tolstoy biography, Rosamund Bartlett.

imagine...: Summer 2011

The Trouble with Tolstoy

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Alan Yentob examines how Russia's greatest novelist became her greatest troublemaker.

Alan Yentob takes an epic train ride through Tolstoy's Russia, examining how Russia's greatest novelist became her greatest troublemaker.

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Summer 2011

The Trouble with Tolstoy

Part 1: At War with Himself

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