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A selection of Blog Posts on Radio 4 about Life & Fate, the novel, the author and the actors in the series.

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Meet the families, lovers and friends. Print a PDF.

18 Sep

Kenneth Branagh plays Viktor, a nuclear physicist, evacuated with his family and members of his research institute eastwards from Moscow to Kazan. (Starring Kenneth Branagh, Greta Scacchi and Harriet Walter)

19 Sep

Viktor's mother, Anna, writes him a farewell letter. As a Jew in Berdichev, in the Ukraine now occupied by the Germans, she has been forced into a ghetto and understands what will come next. (Starring Janet Suzman as Anna).

19 Sep

David Tennant plays Nikolai Krymov, a commissar, posted to Stalingrad. Angered by the ordinary soldiers' response to his political position, he volunteers for dangerous missions. (Starring David Tennant)

20 Sep

In a forest in northern Russia, Lenya, a pilot, longs to see his pregnant girlfriend, Vera. She is stranded in Stalingrad with her father, Stepan.

20 Sep

Sofya, a Jewish doctor, is taken prisoner and put on a cattle-truck going west to Poland. A German SS officer, Liss, oversees the building of the gas chambers and entertains Eichmann on an inspection tour. (Starring Samuel West, John Sessions and Sara Kestelman)

21 Sep

Lyuda's ex-husband, Abarchuk, is still a staunch believer in the Party even though he was arrested and sent to a Russian labour camp some years ago.

21 Sep

Building 6/1 is a former apartment block in Stalingrad that hides a clutch of Russian soldiers defending the frontline. Their leader is Grekov but they call him 'The Manager', an informality that worries party apparatchiks. (Starring David Tennant)

22 Sep

Peter Bach, a German officer, is wounded and treated at a military field hospital. The brief respite from the fighting gives him time to contemplate his secret affair with a Russian girl, Zina, an affair that he roughly denies when confronted with it.

22 Sep

Novikov, a tank commander, prepares his troops for Operation Uranus, the campaign which becomes the turning point in the Battle of Stalingrad. On his way to the front, he visits Zhenya, his lover, in Kuibyshev.

23 Sep

Krymov denounces Grekov as an enemy of the state. After a session of speeches marking the 25th anniversary of the Revolution at which he is cold-shouldered by his colleagues, he slips out to find Stepan Spiridonov at the Central Power Station. (Starring David Tennant)

23 Sep

Krymov is arrested and sent to the KGB headquarters in the Lubyanka. Zhenya returns to Moscow to support him; she stays with Viktor and Lyuda and begins the process of daily queuing for information about Krymov: will she be allowed to deliver a parcel for him? (Starring Kenneth Branagh, David Tennant, Greta Scacchi and Harriet Walter)

24 Sep

As the Russian tanks encircle Stalingrad, the commanders of the German 6th Army realise that the end is in sight but Hitler will not permit a surrender. Spiridonov abandons the power station to join his daughter, Vera, and her new baby on a barge frozen into the Volga.

25 Sep)

Viktor's scientific breakthrough has not brought him the success he expected and instead he is gradually ostracised for his 'anti-Soviet' science. He starts to dread the knock at the door. (Starring Kenneth Branagh, Greta Scacchi and Harriet Walter)

12 Sep, 09.00am

Andrew Marr discusses the life and work of the writer Vasily Grossman in a special programme recorded at an event in Oxford to celebrate his greatest novel, Life and Fate.

Listen to clips from a Life and Fate event where producers, historians and contributors discussed the dramatisation, the book and its significance today.

Episodes 1-3: 4 Sep 7.45pm, 17 Sep 8.45pm, 18 Sep 7.45pm

Elliot Levey reads Vasily Grossman's front line despatches from the battle of Stalingrad. Three episodes: Through Chekhov's Eyes, The Stalingrad Army, Ukraine Without Jews