News about Leo Tolstoy

EXCLUSIVE: Countess Alexandra Tolstoy (right), 50, said billionaire Sergei Pugachev (left, with the Countess) subjected her to years of 'horrific' physical and emotional abuse before he was forced into exile in 2015. In an emotional interview, the Anglo-Russian aristocrat accused him of repeatedly hitting her, drugging her, isolating her from her friends and even trying to abduct their children. Countess Tolstoy, a travel writer who also runs a horse-riding holiday business, met Pugachev in 2008.

Queen Camilla (pictured) launched Winter Flowers Week at the Garden Museum in Lambeth, central London, today. Her Majesty, 75, put on a vivacious display as she opened the show and appeared delighted while enjoying the scent of a striking yellow bouquet of flowers. The Queen heard author Leo Tolstoy's famous quote about happy and unhappy families just days after senior royals were photographed together following the publication of a controversial book about the monarchy.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a woman who had been detained in Iran for six years, gave a speech at a 2023 Booker Award ceremony in which she claimed to have kept a copy of Margaret Atwood's dystopian book in a'secret library' of her former prison ward. The book, which has been translated for television, film, and opera, is about the exploitation of women by an authoritarian government. "Books helped me to escape into the world of others when I was incapable of making one of my own," she said.

War And Peace will be transported to a desert island by comedian and writer Adrian Edmondson. For the first time in 2016, Leo Tolstoy's book appeared on television as part of the series.

CRAIG BROWN: I worked at Tatler's affluent monthly newspaper for a decade. My job, which mainly consisted of writing amusing captions and punning headlines for party photos, took at least two hours per month, but I was on the job for eight days a month, so I had plenty of time on my hands. The fashion department's comings and goings were especially diverting. Models arrived clutched folders and then had to stand by while fashion and art departments flashed impassively through their photographs, brutal customs officers at the barriers to glamour's world. The fashion designers themselves were equally fascinating. These men and women, with names that are familiar with their own designer labels, will wander around the door from time to time in order to schmooze and be schmoozed by the fashion editors. What surprised me the most was that they seldom dressed as they preached what they preached. They never appeared to be on a quest for any reason. Not for them, they were influenced by their ridiculously expensive clothing that they urged others to buy. Rather, they went for squeezable T-shirts and hand-me-down denims, like priests in civvies.

MARK ALMOND: We have grown accustomed to an exhausting slugfest between the two sides in recent months. But there are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades occur,' Lenin's words were quoted: 'There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.' The sudden surge by Ukraine's forces into Russian-controlled territories is not just a brilliant tactical move; it may be a pivotal turning point in the war.