Woman's Hour Drama - Mrs Tolstoy - A Simple Life

By Stephen Wakelam. A Simple Life: Sofya Tolstoy is pregnant again. Leo invites an aristocratic Christian disciple to stay. Is Sofya right not to trust him? In his fifties the great writer Leo Tolstoy has a spiritual crisis and converts to Christianity. He stops sleeping with his wife. They have ten children. Taking the vows of poverty and chastity literally Tolstoy wants to give everything away but Sofya has a large family to feed. This is the woman who transcribed 'War and Peace' six times and who fights off rivals on daily basis for a place at his side. For forty eight years, the Tolstoys tormented each other with love and hate. Ian McDiarmid and Haydn Gwynne star in this portrait of a tempestuous marriage. Sofya Tolstoy ... Haydn Gwynne Leo Tolstoy ... Ian McDiarmid Chertkov ... Paul Ritter Tanya Tolstoy ... Vineeta Rishi Directed by Claire Grove.