Edward Petherbridge

Tolstoy's epic novel, War and Peace, deals with some of the most momentous events of 19th-century Europe, reaching a climax in the French invasion of Russia. However, although war and rumours of it cast a shadow over all the characters' lives, the...

In the second half of Tolstoy's masterly novel War and Peace, Napoleon's dramatic military invasion of Russia seems to overwhelm the private lives of all the characters. But it is precisely these private lives which in the end survive the clash of...