War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
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War and Peace
BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Narrator: Full Cast, Harriet Walter, John Hurt, Lesley Manville, Paterson Joseph

Unabridged: 9 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/06/2017

Categories: Fiction, Classic

Synopsis

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 Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana in central Russia and educated privately. He studied Oriental languages and law at the University of Kazan, then led a life of dissipation until 1851, when he went to the Caucasus and joined an artillery regiment. He took part in the Crimean War, and on the basis of this experience wrote The Sevastopol Stories, which confirmed his tenuous reputation as a writer.

After a period in St. Petersburg and abroad, where he studied educational methods for use in his school for peasant children at Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy married Sofya Behrs in 1862. The next fifteen years was a period of great happiness: the couple had thirteen children, and Tolstoy managed his estates, continued his educational projects, and wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

A Confession marked a spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life; he became an extreme moralist, and in a series of pamphlets written after 1880, he expressed his rejection of state and church, indictment of the weaknesses of the flesh, and denunciation of private property. He published his last novel, Resurrection, in 1900.

Tolstoy's teaching earned him many followers at home and abroad, but also much opposition, and in 1901 he was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church. He died in 1910.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Andrew on January 31, 2021

This is a pretty good audio dramatization of War and Peace, produced by BBC Radio, and featuring some really good actors, including John Hurt, Paterson Joseph, and Roger Allam. This version tells the story through flashbacks, with a number of the main characters basically recounting the story to eac......more

Goodreads review by Jason on September 29, 2022

This audiobook was exceptional! It's performed like a radio show rather than a book naration, which coming from BBC I assure you is very entertaining. I usually don't take much to novels, but had been considering this one for a while. When my mother suggested it by title when brainstorming things to......more

Goodreads review by Pearlyn on August 21, 2023

Somehow from the title I never figured this was fiction (it gives Machiavelli's The Prince vibes). Anyway I listened to the BBC Cast Dramatisation (so a bit of a cheat), and it wasn't easy to keep track of all the characters/voices, but I think the cast did a pretty good job trying to make each char......more

Goodreads review by K. M on September 10, 2022

Despite the stellar cast, and my love of BBC dramatizations, I found this production hard to follow. Not only was there a large cast (who is who? Who do they love / hate? what did they do? why does the Polish guy sound Australian?) but also spans quite a few years with each personal account noted on......more

Goodreads review by avri on May 20, 2025

Such an interesting way to read such a complicated book. I loved it and it definitely makes the plot easier to comprehend. Some speech is pretty muffled because of the dramatized effects but nothing that takes away from the story.......more

Quotes

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

The cast is extraordinary, but pre-eminent is Harriet Walter in a masterclass of apparently effortless radio acting The Stage

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