Guided by the writer’s astonishingly honest and confessional diaries, Yentob travels through Tolstoy’s Russia looking at the life, work and legacy of the author of "Anna Karenina" and "War and Peace". It reveals a difficult, restless, ferociously brilliant man with an appetite for causing trouble both for himself, his family and for the world around him due to his fundamentalist views on God, violence and government.

“This biographical look at Tolstoy reveals what made him more than just a great novelist, but also one of Russia’s most important moral thinkers, and a life-long anti-authoritarian.” The Daily Telegraph “Evocative and illuminating...an elegantly assembled profile that includes telling interviews and impressive images.” -The Sunday Times