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The Leo Tolstoy BBC Radio Drama Collection
The Leo Tolstoy BBC Radio Drama Collection
Jan 27, 2026 10:12 PM

Author:Leo Tolstoy,Simon Russell Beale,Amanda Redman,Emily Mortimer,Teresa Gallagher,Toby Stephens,Richard Dillane,Ian McDiarmid,Haydn Gwynne,Full Cast,Katherine Igoe

The Leo Tolstoy BBC Radio Drama Collection

BBC Radio adaptations of Tolstoy's three major novels, plus a reading of his profound philosophical memoir, an original drama based on his life and a bonus documentary

One of the greatest novelists of all time, Leo Tolstoy is famed worldwide for his masterpieces of realist fiction, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. This comprehensive collection contains both those iconic works, as well as his final novel Resurrection; his autobiographical essay A Confession; Stephen Wakelam's dramatic account of his tempestuous marriage, Mrs Tolstoy; and In Our Time: Tolstoy.

War and Peace - 1805, and Napoleon Bonaparte is threatening the peace of Europe. In St Petersburg and Moscow, the lives of three aristocratic families are about to be changed forever... This epic dramatisation stars Simon Russell Beale, Gerard Murphy, Amanda Redman and Emily Mortimer.

Anna Karenina - In 19th Century Russia, bored high society wife Anna embarks on an affair with the handsome Count Vronsky - but her passion sets her on a path to self-destruction. Starring Teresa Gallagher and Toby Stephens.

Resurrection - Serving on the jury in a murder trial, Prince Dimitri recognises the young prostitute in the dock as Katerina Maslova, the girl he seduced years before. Knowing he is partly responsible for her plight, he attempts to atone for his mistakes and find redemption. Katherine Igoe and Richard Dillane star in this powerful adaptation of Tolstoy's final novel.

A Confession - Read by Joss Ackland, this compelling religious testament describes Tolstoy's search for God, faith and the meaning of life.

Mrs Tolstoy - In his fifties, Leo Tolstoy has a spiritual crisis. Converting to Christianity, he gives up writing, stops sleeping with his wife, won't see his children and wants to give away all his possessions. But Sofya is ready to fight for her husband and family... Starring Ian McDiarmid and Haydn Gwynne.

In Our Time: Tolstoy - Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tolstoy's life and writings, exploring his urgent desire to represent real life in his work, how he strove to convey truth to the reader - and why he ultimately gave up on literature to concentrate on religious and political philosophy.

Please note that the chapter headings have been updated as of 10th February 2022.

© 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

(p) 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

First published 1869 (War and Peace), 1877 (Anna Karenina), 1879 (A Confession), 1899 (Resurrection)

Reviews

Slick and polished...immersive productions of much-loved novelisations...long may we enjoy them.

—— Doctor Who Magazine

White on White is an ambitious palette.

—— New York Times

[An] oddly enthralling tale about a postgrad student bearing witness to an artist's marital breakdown

—— Anthony Cummins , Observer

Marvelous, as elegant as an opaque sheet of ice that belies the swift and turbulent waters beneath.

—— Lauren Groff

A haunting, irresistible novel. I loved this book for its depth and perception, for its beauty and eerie rhythms, but most of all for its wonderfully dream-like spell. It's breathtaking.

—— Brandon Taylor

In the middle ages, human skin was seen as a blanket stretched to cover a secret, inner life, writes Aysegül Savas. Reading White on White for me is like an outer skin which you open layer by layer as you read; gentle, mysterious and profound.

—— Marina Abramovic

Terse, slender and exquisite, like a finely-wrought figurine carved in bone, White on White spins its tale of doubles, womanhood and power with the magnetic pull of a thriller, while refusing to settle for easy resolution. I loved its quiet, observant wisdom; its willingness to look for depth underneath shiny surfaces.

—— Livia Franchini

I was riveted by it. The delicate restraint of the language just adds to its power.

—— Celia Paul

Savas's characters watch each other as they avoid themselves, in an acute and obliterating double portrait.

—— Leanne Shapton

A superb novel by an exceptionally elegant, intelligent, and original writer.

—— Sigrid Nunez

Fans of Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy should take note of this striking portrait.

—— Publishers Weekly

Pacy and packed with well-drawn characters.

—— Sunday Telegraph, *Books to Look Out For 2022*

Compelling.

—— Erica Wagner , Harper's Bazaar

Hadley is our great novelist of bourgeois domesticity, sensitive to its emotional perturbations and...devotedly attentive to its gorgeous solidity.

—— James Marriott , The Times

Hadley... has the gift for bringing everything she has, sees and knows to the characters she creates... Free Love is brilliantly plotted and keeps its secret through two-thirds of its length so faithfully, I did not even begin to guess at the hugely satisfying slipknot ahead.

—— Kate Kellaway , Observer

No one is better than Tessa Hadley at capturing the secret longing that presides within her many wonderful characters. Her latest, written in her usual crisp, absorbing prose, charts the sexual awakening of one woman in 1960s London.

—— Jessie Thompson , Evening Standard, *Books to Look Out For 2022*

Achingly moving and real... Hadley's poignant drawing together of a situation...shows a writer with boundless compassion. Yet again, she offers insightful and sensitive understanding of the quiet compromises people make to survive in a deeply compromised world.

—— Michael Donkor , Guardian

A fascinating portrait of a world of politics, manners, morals and the decline of empire in a period of rapid societal change... Hadley writes compellingly fascinating characters viewed from every angle, perfectly encapsulating an era of change.

—— Kirsty McLuckie , Scotsman

A gorgeously magnanimous novel, which reprises Hadley's favoured themes of middle age, and how - and when, and if - to change one's life.

—— Stephanie Sy-Quia , Spectator

Daring and sensual, Free Love is a compulsive exploration of love, sexual freedom and living out the most meaningful version of our lives.

—— SheerLuxe

An engrossing ploy, elegant nuanced writing...this is a novel to savour

—— Morag MacInnes , Tablet, *Novel of the Week*

As ever, Ms Hadley's prose is limpid and measured yet richly sonorous: her story combines a modern sensibility with the psychological realism of writers such as Henry James... The ending glimmers with possibility--while suggesting that liberation comes at a cost.

—— Economist

With astute psychological awareness of her characters, Hadley presents a visceral and engaging picture of a bygone time. Unexpected twists and unclichéd characters support the luscious language, making this a real pleasure of a read.

—— UK Press Syndication

Free Love artfully delves beneath the veneer of the British middle class to tell an intimate story of generational discord, political change and sexual freedom.

—— Mark Vessery , i

Hadley's resplendent eighth novel... [has] poignantly astute observations on class, destiny and the false promises of the sexual revolution.

—— Hephzibah Anderson , Mail on Sunday

Hadley's eighth novel is as absorbing as any of her other fiction, with complex family secrets, brilliant insights...and lush descriptions of nature.

—— Markie Robson-Scott , Arts Desk

Hadley chooses her words with spellbinding precision.

—— Claire Allfree , Metro

Hadley's complex sentences are purring marvels of engineering... A brilliant writer of interiority...she has a gift...for portraying the state of wanting to be wanted, or simply to be seen... almost every page struck me anew with some elegant phrasing, feline irony or shrewdly sympathetic insight.

—— Anthony Cummins , Observer

Few contemporary novelists write about their characters' inner worlds with a finely filigreed but plain-spoken acuity that Tessa Hadley brings to her work...accessing roving, rich depths... Hadley is a master in her field.

—— Lucy Scholes , Daily Telegraph

"With each new book by Tessa Hadley, I grow more convinced that she's one of the greatest stylists alive. . . . To read Hadley's fiction is to grow self-conscious in the best way: to recognize with astonishment the emotions playing behind our own expressions, to hear articulated our own inchoate anxieties. . . . The whole grief-steeped story should be as fun as a dirge, but instead it feels effervescent-lit not with mockery but with the energy of Hadley's attention, her sensitivity to the abiding comedy of human desire. . . . Extraordinary.

—— The Washington Post

Brilliant.... In the hands of a lesser novelist, the intricate tangle of lives at the center of Late in the Day would feel like just such a self-satisfied riddle or, at best, like sly narrative machinations. Because this is Tessa Hadley, it instead feels earned and real and, even in its smallest nuances, important.... It's to her credit that Hadley manages to be old-fashioned and modernist and brilliantly postmodern all at once.... We've seen this before, and we've never seen this before, and it's spectacular.

—— New York Times Book Review

Utterly engrossing... Free Love is highly gratifying.

—— Ellen Peirson-Hagger , New Statesman

Free Love is a triumph.

—— Sarah Collins , Prospect

Brilliantly done... Hadley writes with devastating psychological insight, her prose spare and scalpel sharp. But she is also judiciously non-judgemental, a generous chronicler of the foibles and fears that mar and make a marriage.

—— Eithne Farry , Daily Express

Free Love is an absolute joy to read from a writer who never puts a word wrong. Fans of Small Pleasures will love it.

—— Sarra Manning , Red

[A] brilliant, sensual, seductively plotted new novel... Hadley has written an extraordinary story about love and transformation.

—— Independent

Free Love is often deeply perceptive and affecting... it lets you imagine what it was like to wrestle with old and new ways of thinking in an age that shaped (and continues to shape) our own.

—— Guy Stevenson , Literary Review

It's the 1960s and socialism, sex and nuclear anxiety have come crashing into the middle-class bubble Tessa Hadley novels usually operate so brilliant within.

—— The Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*

A story about change and its limits, its beautifully judged ending will bring you to tears.

—— Daily Mail, *Summer Reads of 2022*

[An] acutely realised, deeply humane novel... Unmissable.

—— Tablet, *Summer Reads of 2022*

No novel published this year gave me more pleasure than Tessa Hadley's Free Love.

—— New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

Nothing drew me in as conclusively as Free Love by Tessa Hadley, who is surely one of our most astute and deft observers of everyday lives.

—— New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

Hadley's novels continue to get better and better - and this is her finest, most pleasurable yet... it's near enough the perfect present in book form

—— Daily Mail, *Books of the Year*

She is, in all her mastery of the craft, a writer's writer.

—— Marie Claire
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