War and Peace: BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation

Leo Tolstoy

Apr 2017 · BBC Digital Audio · Narrated by Full Cast, Harriet Walter, John Hurt, Lesley Manville, and Paterson Joseph

About this audiobook

Paterson Joseph, John Hurt, Lesley Manville and Harriet Walter are among the stellar cast of this landmark BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Leo Tolstoy’s epic saga.

‘Tolstoy’s imagined world is recreated on air brilliantly by the extraordinary cast’ The Spectator

One of the greatest novels of all time, War and Peace explores historical, social, ethical and religious issues on a scale never before attempted in fiction, and reflects the panorama of life at every level of Russian society during the 19th Century.

Adapted for radio by Timberlake Wertenbaker, this riveting, wide-ranging drama follows the fortunes of four Russian aristocratic families during the Napoleonic War. Told in flashback over ten episodes, it moves from fashionable society soirées in St Petersburg and Moscow to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino, as protagonists Pierre, Natasha, Marya and Nikolai describe to their children the events that shaped their lives and those of every Russian who lived through this turbulent time.

First broadcast on New Year's Day 2015, this dynamic full-cast dramatisation features specially composed music by Stephen Warbeck. It stars Paterson Joseph as Pierre, Phoebe Fox as Natasha, Natasha Little as Marya and Sam Reid as Nikolai, part of a stunning cast including Alun Armstrong, Simon Russell Beale and Roger Allam.

Duration: 10 hours approx.

About the author

Leo Tolstoy (1828 –1910) was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852–1856), and Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and Hadji Murad. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays.