What is travel without people? If you are thinking of travelling to Russia, think of its heroes. Tolstoy is one of them. He was a great writer, yes — the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina — but he was also incredibly forward-thinking for his time. Born an aristocrat, like every other major Russian writer of the 19th Century except Dostoyevsky, he was a reformist campaigner and set up schools on his estates for the peasants. Tolstoy: A Russian Life explores the life of this remarkable man, and his often stormy relationships with those around him (including Turgenev, whom he allegedly challenged to a duel).