Cheat’s guide to War and Peace

TO coincide with the BBC’s new adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic, VIRGINIA BLACKBURN reveals everything you need to know about the epic novel without poring over its 1,200 pages.

Cast of War and Peace BBC

The stars of the new BBC series

What’s it all about? 

Woody Allen once quipped: “I speed read War And Peace. It’s about Russia.”

Starting in 1805 and leading up to the French invasion in 1812 the novel moves from the elegant salons of St Petersburg and the massive estates of the landed gentry to the bloodied battlefields of the war, hence the book’s title.

It focuses on five aristocratic families and the turbulence they experience as their lives are shattered by the war.

At the heart of it all is Pierre, aka Count Pyotr Kirillovich Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of Count Kirill Vladimirovich.

Pierre unexpectedly gains a huge inheritance , thus making him highly eligible and, against the background of the mighty battles, he searches for his destiny, eventually achieving a kind of personal peace.

The second half of the 1,200-page novel contains lengthy tracts in which Tolstoy muses on the philosophy and theory of warfare and history.

Viewers will be relieved to learn the new adaptation cuts it all out. There have been attempts to encapsulate the half-a-million word text into something a little more palatable, one of the most famous of which is: “Napoleon invaded. It snowed. Napoleon failed. Russia won.”

There is also a review on Amazon that sums up the book as: “It’s not easy being posh.

Cause and effect for historical events aren’t as simple as historians make out, they occur within a nexus. Women, know your limitations and don’t sleep around.”

Who are the main characters?

There are too many to list here so suffice to say that there are five main families: the Bezukhovs; the Bolkonskys; the Rostovs; the Kuragins; and the Drubetskoys.

Naïve and socially awkward Pierre, played by US actor Paul Dano in this production, whom some believe voices Tolstoy’s own views, is one key figure, while others include his amoral wife Helene Kuragin (Tuppence Middleton), noble and gallant Prince Andrei Bolkonsky (James Norton), who goes to war with disastrous consequences, Natasha Rostov (Lily James), who is the love interest of several characters and Prince Boris Drubetskoy (Aneurin Barnard ). Napoleon himself also puts in an appearance. 

So who is behind the new TV adaptation? 

Step forward Andrew Davies, adapter of the classics for the small screen extraordinaire, who was responsible for Colin Firth and the infamous wet shirt in Pride And Prejudice in 1995.

You could say that Firth dived into that lake an unknown actor and emerged sopping wet, a star . A similar outcome is predicted in this latest production not for Pierre but for dashing Prince Andrei, who looks almost as good in breeches as did Colin. All of this is due to Davies’ propensity to “sex up” his screenplays.

That scene in the lake in Pride And Prejudice was singularly missing from the book.

Davies is in fact one of the best known screenwriters of his day. Born in 1936 in Rhiwbina, a suburb of Cardiff, he originally became a teacher before he started to contribute to the BBC’s Home Service and subsequently wrote his first radio play in 1964.

Many more followed before he began to adapt fiction for television in 1980 and he has been responsible for some of the best dramas on the small screen since then.

These include House Of Cards in 1990, which the novel’s author Michael Dobbs enjoyed so much that he went on to write two sequels.

Davies then adapted Middle march in 1994, which propelled George Eliot’s 1871 novel to the top of the bestseller list, Bleak House in 2005 and Little Dorrit three years later.

There have been many others, including a film of Brideshead Revisited and work on the Bridget Jones movies.

Andrew DaviesGETTY

Screenwriter Andrew Davies is responsible for the TV adaptation

Is similar sauce expected in War and Peace? 

You betcha although the steamier scenes do not involve Pierre or Prince Andrei.

Rather one salacious episode involves Boris . In the original novel the line, “Boris had become the acknowledged lover of Countess Bezukhov” has been turned into several scenes illustrating in graphic detail exactly how he got to his exalted position.

“I thought that would make several little scenes . How it started, what happened in the middle and how she gets rid of him in the end,” Davies said this week.

More scandalous still is the relationship between Helene and her brother Anatole (Callum Turner ).

In the book it is hinted at that they are very close but on screen they are pictured in bed together, with no doubt whatsoever surrounding the nature of their relationship.

But did Tolstoy really mean to imply that it was an incestuous one? “Tolstoy indicates this so subtly that most readers – including me – at first reading miss it all together,” Davies told the Radio Times.

“But this relationship and indeed their attitude to it is so crucial to our understanding of them that for me at least it needs to be on the screen.” That is as maybe.

There is another episode involving Helene that would have been considered so scandalous at the time that Tolstoy does not spell it out explicitly but he leaves readers in no doubt as to what has happened.

That is not the case here. Mercifully Davies has left all the theorising out, observing only that: “Occasionally I have written one or two things that Tolstoy forgot to write.”

Hopkins GETTY

Anthony Hopkins played the role of Pierre for an earlier TV adaptation

The BBC must have been excited to be the first to bring the novel to the screen? 

Not only are they not the first but this isn’t even their own initial offering.

In 1972 Auntie broadcast a well-received adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins as Pierre and there have been French and Italian productions as well as a four-day reading of the novel on television in Russia.

There have been two Russian films and a US version made in 1956 starring Henry Fonda as Pierre, Audrey Hepburn as Natasha and Mel Ferrer as Prince Andrei.

It has also inspired an opera by Sergei Prokofiev, several stage adaptations and numerous radio broadcasts. 

Count Leo TolstoyGETTY

War And Peace author Count Leo Tolstoy

What about the author?

Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy is widely considered to be one of the greatest authors the world has ever seen.

Born into the aristocratic milieu he was to portray with such genius, Leo began writing in his 20s and produced numerous short stories before ending up as a Christian anarchist whose strong views about non-violent religion were to influence Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

He died in 1910. Apart from War And Peace his other great literary masterpiece is Anna Karenina, about the adulterous affair of a marriedRussian aristocrat, which weighs in at a mere 1,000 pages.

Despite the obvious potential for sexing up , Andrew Davies hasn’t got his mitts on it yet. Watch this space.

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