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Leo Tolstoy

January 2025

  • We tried to communicate the problem to our waitress.’ Photo features Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy with his family at Yasnaya Polyana circa 1908.

    Kindness of strangers
    The kindness of strangers: we thought we’d been poisoned at Tolstoy’s house. Then a local explained what we had really drunk

    We took thirsty chugs from the tall glasses. Surely this ‘water’ belonged in a biohazard chamber, not our mouths

December 2024

  • Chumisa Dornford-May and Jamie Muscato in Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 at Donmar Warehouse, London.

    Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 review – terrific riff on Tolstoy

    The singing blows the roof off in this magnificently fun production of Dave Malloy’s musical, based on a section of War and Peace

May 2023

  • ‘Capable of transporting the reader’: Leïla Slimani photographed in November 2022.

    The Scent of Flowers at Night by Leïla Slimani review – a writer’s lot

  • Unbuttoned … Robert Akodoto as Vronsky and Lindsey Campbell as Anna Karenina.

    Anna Karenina review – sparky feminist reading of Tolstoy

September 2022

  • Nathalie Boutefeu in A Couple.

    First look review
    A Couple review – Tolstoy’s other half in mournful closeup

    Venice film festival: Nathalie Boutefou is superb as Sofia, the author’s wife, assistant and rival, in a shrewd character study

May 2022

  • George Saunders

    In brief: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain; The Slow Road to Tehran; Drift – review

    George Saunders leads a writing masterclass, Rebecca Lowe goes on a cycling adventure and Caryl Lewis makes a magical English-language fiction debut

February 2022

  • Adelle Leonce (Anna) and Chris Jenks (Vronsky) dancing in Anna Karenina

    Anna Karenina review – overthought and underdone

  • Solomon Israel (Stiva) in Anna Karenina

    Anna Karenina review – Tolstoy meets Baz Luhrmann in a magnificent spectacle

January 2022

  • The National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin

    The Guardian view on memory in art: fallible yet magical

    Editorial: Works by great creators such as Jack B Yeats and Tolstoy show how an unreliable recall of the past can be transfigured

October 2021

  • Judging by his expression, he should have thrown that book several hundred pages ago.

    Pass notes
    The 20-page rule: how much time should you give a devastatingly boring book?

    Novelist Mark Billingham advises readers to angrily launch a book across the room after 20 non-gripping pages – but almost 40% of people will keep going right to the end

August 2021

  • The English Patient - 1996<br>The English Patient - 1996 No Merchandising. Editorial Use Only. No Book Cover Usage. Mandatory Credit: Photo by Phil Bray/Tiger Moth/Miramax/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock (5885464u) Kristin Scott Thomas, Ralph Fiennes The English Patient - 1996 Director: Anthony Minghella Tiger Moth/Miramax Scene Still Drama Le Patient anglais

    Top 10s
    Top 10 bookworms in fiction

    If you’re reading a novel, the chances are you’ll be able to relate to characters who love reading, too. These works showcase some of literature’s finest bibliophiles

April 2021

  • Helen McCrory as Anna Karenina and Kevin McKidd as Vronsky in Channel 4’s 2000 adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel.

    Brief letters
    Helen McCrory shone as Anna Karenina

    Brief letters: Supply teachers | Texting the PM | Helen McCrory | European Super League | Picking up the Guardian

March 2021

  • Austrian scythes on a fresh mown meadow

    Country diary
    Country diary: cutting-edge technology from the stone age

    Wellington, Somerset: The blade is shaped like a toucan’s bill and the long wooden handle has the pleasing curve of a well-balanced spine

February 2021

  • Christopher Plummer & Helen Mirren Film: The Last Station 04 September 2009 Director: Michael Hoffman 04 September 2009 SSV85763 Allstar Picture Library/OPTIMUM RELEASING **Warning** This Photograph is for editorial use only and is the copyright of OPTIMUM RELEASING and/or the Photographer assigned by the Film or Production Company & can only be reproduced by publications in conjunction with the promotion of the above Film. A Mandatory Credit To OPTIMUM RELEASING is required. The Photographer should also be credited when known. No commercial use can be granted without written authority from the Film Company. Character(s): Leo Tolstoy, Sofya Tolstoy

    Christopher Plummer remembered: 'It was a privilege to stand so close to greatness'

    Michael Hoffman, who directed Plummer and Helen Mirren in Tolstoy biopic The Last Station, recalls the actors’ joyful connection and how Plummer turned the script into gold

January 2021

  • Author George Saunders photographed by his daughter at home in New York State. 12/12/2020

    Book of the day
    A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders review – rules for good writing, and more

  • George Saunders.

    Books interview
    George Saunders: 'These trenches we're in are so deep'

November 2020

  • A lot to catch up with … a tower of books in the library of Prague.

    'It had been on my shelf for years': readers share their lockdown reads

    Publishers report that coronavirus has boosted sales of long, classic novels. You reveal the great baggy monsters you’ve found the time to tackle

October 2020

  • Heavy reading … the Walk of Ideas in Bebelplatz square in Berlin, Germany in 2006.

    Books blog
    Have you been using the pandemic to catch up on long classic novels?

    Sales of War and Peace, Don Quixote and Middlemarch are booming, and the appeal of a seriously long read has never been more alluring

July 2020

  • anna karenina

    Top 10s
    Top 10 best-dressed characters in fiction

    Authors from Charlotte Brontë to Suzanne Collins have imagined clothes for their characters that are almost as expressive as their wearers

June 2020

  • A sign at a drive-in coronavirus testing station in Berlin

    Why the UK is the sick man of Europe again

    Letters: British neoliberalism, social inequality and arrogance have left us trailing in Germany’s wake in the fight against coronavirus, argue John Green and Glyn Turton, while Jinty Nelson says the UK has been losing ground in other areas for years
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