download the new version for apple War and Peace

Petersburg, with its Baroque cathedrals and snow-capped Winter Palace, is the star of the first episode, which aired last Sunday. The gold standard here, and the one to beat, is the BBC’s Parade’s End.

This adaptation will rise or fall by how well it manages the stark contrast between the battlefield and the ballroom between war and peace. Tolstoy did, on occasion, mention it.Īndrew Davies must have thrilled at the prospect of adding brutal battles to his usual repertoire of lavish balls and marital problems Jane Austen somehow managed to write several novels about the English aristocracy without mentioning that a few piddling conflicts known as the Napoleonic Wars were currently tearing Europe apart. This new BBC adaptation is in the safe hands of a veteran of costume drama, Andrew Davies, who was responsible for the now near-legendary 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice. I like to put this gap in my reading down to a tactical omission on my part after all, am I not now better able to appreciate the plot-twists of the BBC’s latest six-part adaptation? Is ignorance not bliss? Maybe not, but only when I have finally read the novel will I stop telling myself so. I’m not usually put off by longer novels (though this book – at more than half a million words – manages to stretch even that definition), and Tolstoy’s other masterpiece, Anna Karenina, remains a favourite of mine. T o my constant shame and regret, I am yet to read War and Peace.

Download the new version for apple War and Peace