Dickens vs Tolstoy featuring Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton

good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to this intelligence squared debate Dickens versus Tolstoy the Battle of the great 19th century novelists and I have to say is quite an honor to be on this stage of the two distinguished academics and experts and its wonderful company so I'm very grateful to be here the way we're going to do it is like this in one corner we have Charles Dickens great expectations of course Bleak House you know you know the drill and in the other we have Leo Tolstoy war and peace Anna Karenina you know that drill and if in fact if you could even try and imagine 19th century literature world literature without these Titans try you can't now you have been polled as you into the hall and you'll have the chance to vote again at the end of the evening when you heard the arguments and seen the performances by this great great company so you should have all have a voting slip with Dickens and Tolstoy printed on it tear the slip into and put one or other name into the ballot box when the time happens and if you're still undecided put the whole thing in a box okay all right everybody chills ready here we go for Charles Dickens stage right John Mullen Lord Northcliffe professor oh sorry Lord Northcliffe professor of modern English literature University College London John is written among many many things an acclaimed book on Jane Austen and next year he will be publishing Dickens tricks a book about the techniques Dickens uses in his fiction and staged left for Leo Tolstoy we have Simon Schama Simon is University professor of art history and history at Columbia University in New York he's one of Britain's most popular and admired historians and television broadcasters and he invented a genre as far as I'm concerned his latest book is belonging the second volume of his history of the Jewish people and can we have a hand for John signer now - I don't like the word illustrate because actors don't illustrate they will be the characters in this work and they will bring it to life for you and first of all can we have a hand for the company in general Zoli Ashton is stage right she starred in the television shows wanderlust and fresh meat her screen credits include Greta misfits Sherlock and Gorilla Zoe Ashton next to her is the very distinguished actor and I'm trembling to even say the words Timothy West who is playing magnet as we say in Chicago Grace in this stage he has played Macbeth King Lear Uncle Vanya on stage and his film credits include the day of the jackal the 39 steps and Oliver Twist mr. Timothy West next to mr. Weston's Julia Sawalha who gave me a beautiful lesson on her name and I will never forget that she is known for her iconic performance in BBC's absolutely fabulous and also because that year he is also the star of Cranford and Lark Rise To Candleford as well as numerous stage and film roles Julia Sawalha [Music] nexi julia is mr. Tom Hiddleston star of stage and screen and whose leading roles include the BBC's the hollow crown and the night manager for which he recently won a Golden Globe and last but definitely not least kick Kingsley on our far right [Applause] get this this is the deep thing you never say things like a star is born on stage that's bad look all I'm gonna say is this is a great one and this ladies and gentlemen is his professional debut now we are going to stay strictly to time and I'm gonna be that's why they asked me I think to be the timekeeper I'm going to ask each of our advocates and it start with Simon one minute your passion how did you find Tolstoy well I had had a really good friend who died much new young who was a friend of mine at college and he simply could not believe that anyone had the temerity to call themselves an historian without actually having read war and peace so I did immediately while I was actually having a job in the I was the only only straight man in the soft furnishings department at Liberty's yeah yeah so I used to go around the corner to a veggie restaurant and get my dose of Tolstoy as Tolstoy would have wanted and never look very good thank you and John well I think it's all down to some nickel mister reggiani I fear isn't with us anymore but if he is out there I owe it all to you mr. reggiani who was a rather sardonic occasionally slightly sneery English teacher who did a wonderful thing which was once a week I think it was on Friday and I think it went it was when he was tired and bored he would read aloud to us every Friday and that's what he did in English and I remember that two books he read aloud were Alistair MacLaine's force 10 from Navarone which actually was quite good and and David Copperfield I realize now he must have a much abridged it but it was just hearing him read it out and we're gonna have a bit of David Copperfield later but I was still here mr. Richie on his voice as a kind of desk and I think so it's so for both of you these were pivotal moments a moment that this work spoke to you at some point and became you became yeah I think I mean I would say to to scramble things up a bit my father used to read Dickens every Sunday after tea yeah actually my dad finally saved not enough money to have his first summer holiday and on the way to Victoria Station actually ran into a bear a boy with complete set of Dickens and he exchanged his holiday money for that set of Dickens which I now have so I'm you know this is an evening of demise to embarrass us conflict for me and divided divided love we start now with John Mullen and Dickens thank you okay so I'm going to play an honorable poet here and I I determined before I arrived here that I wasn't going to be oppositional no way you want me Stan that's good that's good I feel that mr. krummel's as an illusion I thought I'm not going to be oppositional and compare and contrast and slag off or anything like that but I will after all I thought I I loved Tolstoy are quite like Simon but I thought I would just say one little thing about Tolstoy and Dickens right at the beginning and that is just anecdotal really which is a couple of years ago I visited Tolstoy's country house he has nya Pollyanna about 150 miles south of Moscow and we were getting it was a British Council Beano and so we were getting the sort of the full tour and from a Tolstoy expert and I was shown into the room where Tolstoy died where also his last place of study and writing was and he shifted his study around the house at different times and she said she told us the one thing remained constant wherever he was working and writing in his years in the house was the picture above his desk and you know what I'm gonna say don't you the picture above his desk was a portrait still there the very one and it's a portrait of Charles Dickens we could stop there could we maybe it's a portrait of Charles Dickens and he had it there every time he looked up thinking what's Kitty gonna say next there was Charles Dickens and that's because I think Dickens did what I would argue he does to many many writers but actually to all his readers and weirdly even to some people who sort of haven't actually read a whole novel but have heard the words phrases even bits of dialogue on TV or cinema he feeds our imaginations like no other writer I meant to say as a claim for his special prowess the most important thing about Dickens and the way he feeds our imaginations is he's funny he's funny but that's not right it's not quite right I think it's better to say I decided that I changed from the Victoria Line to the Jubilee Line and thought saying he's fun he's not good enough that's not right he's funny when he shouldn't be that's what's great about Dickens he's funny at the wrong times in the unexpected places where everybody's at a funeral on her deathbed he's funny and he himself had a description of what he was doing when he was funny and the wrong places at the wrong times and it's in Oliver Twist and he says he's comparing his writing very characteristic of Dickens he's comparing his writing to the stage melodrama much despised by critics much loved by audiences of his day and he's talking about the way in a staged melodrama of his day just after a scene where somebody's languishing and then dungeon somebody will come on and sing a comic song and he says that his writing like such melodrama is he says like a side of streaky bacon the tragic in the comic you see absurdly alternate but as he says that's what it's like isn't it that's what my it's like the absurd and the comic alternating alongside each other when they shouldn't be and I hope you'll hear that in our first reading which has got quite a bit of freaky bacon s in it I think it doesn't need much introduction because it's the opening of a novel it's the opening the very opening of great expectations [Applause] country down by the river within as the river wound 20 miles of the sea my first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening at such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard and that Philip spirit late of this parish and also Georgiana wife of the above were dead and buried and the Alexander Bartholomew Abraham Tobias and Roger infant children of the aforesaid were also dead and buried and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard intersected with dikes and mounds and gates with scattered cattle feeding on it was the marshes and that the low leaden line beyond was the river and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry was PIP Algernon's cried a terrible voice as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch or I'll cut your throat a fearful man all in coarse gray with a great iron on his leg a man with no hat and with broken shoes and with an old rag tied round his head a man who'd been soaked in water and smothered in mud and lamed by stones and cut by flints and stung by nettles and torn by briars who limped and shivered and glared and growled and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin Oh don't cut my fruit soup right don't do it sir tell us your name what pip sir once more give it mouth pip pip sir show us where you live yep put out the place I pointed to where our village today on the flat ensure among the older trees and Pollard's a mile or more from the church the man looking after me at the moment turned me upside down and emptied my pockets there was nothing in them but a piece of bread when the church came to itself for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me and i saw the steeple under my feet when the church came to itself i say i was seated on a high tombstone trembling while he ate the bread ravenously you young dog will fetch eeks you got I believe they were fat though I was at the time under sized for my years and not strong der me if I couldn't eat him and if I didn't know I thought the mind Joey I earnestly express my hope that he wouldn't and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me partly to keep myself upon it partly to stop myself from crying that lookee here where's your mother if he started made a short run and stopped and looked over his shoulder faster also Georgiana that's my mother so and is that your father along I meant your mother yes him too late of his parish who do you live with supposing your Connolly led to him which I had made up my mind about my sister sir mrs. Joe Gargery wife of Joe Gargery the blacksmith sir let's meet said he and looked down at his leg after darkly looking at his leg and me several times he came closer to my tombstone took me by both arms and tilted me back as far as he could hold me so that his eyes look most powerfully down into mine and mine looked most helplessly up international career big question mean whether you're to be allowed to live do you know what a fine yes and you know what wigglers is yes after each question he tilted me over a little more so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger you dipped me a file and you get me Wiggles he tilted me again you bring them both to me he tilted me again alright of your liver he tilted me again I was dreadfully frightened and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands and said if you were kindly pleased to let me keep upright sir perhaps I shouldn't be sick and perhaps like an attendant he gave me a most tremendous dip and roll so that the church jumped over its own weathercocks then he held me by the arms in an upright position on the top of the stone and went on in these fearful terms you bring me tomorrow morning early that file and then Whipple's you bring a lot to me and that now battery over there you do it and you don't never dare say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a person as me or any person some ever and you should be left to live you fail or you get left on my you my my my words in me and beginning then they tell any person whatever no matter how small it is then your heart and your liver shall be tore out roasted and ate so I'm trusting not just to Dickens but to keep my secret weapon for but to are entangled of course because as I remember from mr. reggiani reading David Copperfield what Dickens does his childhood like nobody else but I hope you could hear the streakiness of the bacon they're that incredible opening scene from great expectations is a real place isn't it on the Kent marshes you can go there actually you can see the graves but it's also a weird place from a fairy story it's a frightening episode and it's also a comical episode it's those combinations which are so extraordinary so true to the fantastic part of all our lives also you hear I think in that in that reading especially in Tim's wonderful impersonation of Magwitch what dickens contributed to all our imaginations and our ears his idea Lex as the academics pompously call it the voices of all his characters each one different each one distinctive of themselves in the next passage however because we're gonna have quite a lot of dialogue I wanted a little snatch of something different but in a way just as important which is an example I sort of snatched out of why the adjective Dickensian has become so easy a part of our language Dickensian as a word for all sorts of things one of them being an embracing adjectives for the kind of force of his imagination that takes a place in this case it's going to be London and both describes it and transforms it so now as a little example of that Tom is going to read from a section of the opening of big house fog everywhere fog up the river where it flows among green eights and meadows fog down the river where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the water side pollutions of a great and dirty city fog on the ethics marshes fog on the Kentish heights fog creeping into the cabooses of collier bricks fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships fog drooping on the gunnels of barges and small boats fog in the eyes and throats of ancient greenwich pensioners wheezing by the fire sides of their wards fog in the stem and bowl of the pipe of the wrathful skipper down in his closed cabin fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little apprentice boy on deck chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog with fog all around them as if they were up in a balloon or hanging in the misty clouds gas looming through the fog in diverse places in the streets much as the Sun may from the spongy fields be seen to loom by husbandmen and plowboy most of the shops lighted two hours before their time as the gas seems to know for it has a Haggard and unwilling look yeah I mean the more Dickens less of me the better chance I have I Weber don't Lee I mean you can hear perhaps you know it goes on for pages is all as wonderful as that and you can hear perhaps what is if you're a little critic so wonderful about Diggs he breaks every rule for how you're supposed to write he repeats himself he personifies gloriously and illogically he loves the fantastic those people seeming to float in a balloon in the fog and a little earlier in there in the opening from the passage that Tom read he allows him he's that he's describing how awful it is in November in LA and London and he says it's there's as much mud he says in the streets as if water's had but newly retired from the face of the earth and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus forty feet long or so waddling like an elephantine lizard up Hoban hill it's the first dinosaur in English fiction trivial fact and it's wonderful it's monstrous appalling and utterly comical with its central London waddle Dickens is fiction is full of delicious grotesquerie and monsters but his monsters are such that you let but he lets the reader see how they'd been formed and this next passage that Zoe and Julia are going to read is an example of that it's from great expectations pip who's aged 23 now moons hopelessly after Estella the hard-hearted Estella who's been reared by Miss Havisham to be hard-hearted and one day Estella and pip are summoned from London by Miss Havisham to visit them and they go back to satis house and pip overhears the following dialogue between Estella and Miss Havisham [Applause] at least I was no party to the compact for if I could walk and speak when it was made it was as much as I could do but what would you have you have been very good to me and I owe everything to you what would you have loved you have it I have not mother by adoption retorted Estella never departing from the easy grace of her attitude never raising her voice as the other did never yielding either to anger or to bitterness mother by adoption I have said that I owe everything to you all I possess is freely yours all that you have given me is that your command to have again beyond that I have nothing and if you ask me to give you what you never gave me my gratitude and Duty cannot do impossibilities did I never give her love cried Miss Havisham turning wildly to me did I never give her a burning love inseparable from jealousy at all times and from sharp pain while she speaks to leave us don't call me mad let her call me mad why should I call you mad I of all people does anyone live who knows what set purposes you have half as well as I do does anyone live who knows what a steady memory you have half as well as I do I who have sat on this same hearth on the little stool that has even now beside you there learning your lessons and looking up into your face when your face was strange and frightening me time soon forgot that no not forgotten not forgotten no but treasured up in my memory when have you found me false to your teaching when have you found me unmindful of your lessons when have you found me giving admission here she touched up wasn't with her hand to anything that you excluded be just to miss havisham pushing her away wishing her gray hair with her who taught me to be proud you praised me when I learnt my lesson Miss Havisham with her former action who told me to be hard who praised me when I learnt my lesson having some quite shrieked as she stretched out her arms miss teller looked at every moment and with a kind of calm wonder but was not otherwise disturbed when the moment was passed she looked down at the fire again I cannot think said Estella raising her eyes after a silence why you should be so unreasonable when I come to see you after a separation I have never forgotten your wrongs and their causes I have never been unfaithful to you or your schooling I have never shown any weakness that I can charge myself with would it be weakness did you return my love but yes yes she will call it so I begin to think that Estella an amusing way after another moment of calm wonder did I almost understand how this comes about if you had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in the dark confinement of these rooms and had never let her know that there was such a thing as the daylight by which she had never once seen your face if you had done that and then for a purpose had wanted her to understand the daylight and know all about it you would have been disappointed and angry Miss Havisham with her head in her hands set making a low moaning in swaying herself on her chair but gave no arms Oh which is nearer and nearer Kay if you had taught her from the dawn of her intelligence with your utmost energy and might that there was such a thing as daylight but that it was made to be her enemy and destroyer and she must always turn against it for it it had blighted you and would else blight her if you had done this and then for a purpose had wanted her to take naturally to the daylight and she could not you would have been disappointed and angry Miss Havisham said listening for a moment but it seemed for couldn't I see her face but still made no answer so I must be taken as I have been made the success is not mine the failure is not mine but the two together make me I mean Miss Havisham's a monster you I feel sorry for her don't you that's his trick or one of his many tricks to show you how people are made and twisted and pip all the time is listening to this and he too has been made by his expectations into a different kind of monster he's wonderful at populating our imaginations with these characters populating on a language with these characters I mean just think that there are more characters in Dickens who become words in the Oxford English Dictionary than those of any other novelist Gradgrind bumble Heep pick sniffy um they've come adjectives pub slapper II nouns Micawber ish best of all maybe Scrooge I mean it's impossible to kind of face the fact that he invented that it seems snatched out of nature itself in the last reading I want to come back to that strange mixture of the dark and the comical the grim and the funny that is so distinctive of Dickens and is the thing he shares I think with Shakespeare the jesting in the graveyard Samuel Johnson said about Shakespeare the mourner in Shakespeare's the mourner tramps to the funeral the reveler staggers from the inn and that's how it is in Dickens where funerals are almost inevitably inadvertently funny in this last passage which is from David Copperfield we are che Micawber David and you've got to the most important thing to remember for this passage is David Copperfield is twelve years old in this passage his mother has died and the ghastly murdstone's have sent him to work in the blacking factory his one solace is that he has lodgings with the Micawber's but then they mr. Micawber is arrested as he inevitably always is for debt and sent to the debtors prison this passage he's just been released so there's a little bit of celebration and the company David mr. micawber mrs. micawber numerous children and the or fling the or fling by the way is an orphan from the workhouse who works who is so down on her luck that she's the Micawber servant and this is what happens I passed my evenings with mr. and mrs. Micawber during the remaining term of our residents under the same roof and I think we became fonder of one another as time went on on the last Sunday they invited me to dinner and we had a loin of pork and apple sauce and a pudding I had bought a spotted wooden horse overnight as a parting gift to little Wilkins Micawber that was the boy and a doll for little Emma I had also bestowed a shilling on the offing who was about to be disbanded we had a very pleasant day though we were all in a tender state about our approaching separation I shall never master Koth Copperfield revert to the period where mr. Micawber was in difficulties without thinking of you your conduct has always been of the most delicate and a relighting description you have never been a larger you have been a friend again couple feels though he had been accustomed and accustomed to call me of late has a heart to feel for the distresses of his fellow-creatures when they are behind a cloud and ahead to plan and a hand to ensure the general ability to dispose of such available property as he could be buried away with I expressed my sense of this commendation and said I was very sorry we were going to lose one another my dear young friend I am older than you a man of some experience in life and of some experience in short in difficulties generally speaking at present and until something turns up which I am I may say hotly expected I have nothing to bestow but advice still my advice is so far worth taking that in short I have never taken it myself and mr. Micawber who had been beaming and smiling all over his head and face up to the present moment checked himself and frowned the miserable crutch that you'll be home I saved returned mr. Micawber quite forgetting himself and smiling again the miserable wretch you behold my advice is never do tomorrow what you can do today procrastination is the thief of time kawaii my call papaw's maxim my dear your Bob aunt was very well in his way and heaven forbid that I should disparage him tell him for all in all we near sell in sort make the acquaintance probably of anybody else possessing at his time of life the same legs for gaiters and able to read the same description of print without spectacles but he applied that maxim to our marriage my dear and that was so far prematurely entered into in consequence that I never recovered the expects mr. Micawber looked aside at mrs. Micawber and added not that I am sorry for it quite the contrary my love after which he was grave for a minute or so my other piece of advice Garfield you know annual income 20 pounds annual expenditure 19 and six result happiness annual income 20 pounds annual expenditure 20 pounds ought and six result misery the blossom is blighted the leaf is withered the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene and and in short you are forever floored as I am to make his example the more impressive mr. Micawber drank a glass of punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction and whistled the college horn pipe I did not fail to assure him that I would store these precepts in my mind though indeed I had no need to do so for at the time they affected me visibly our time is sadly almost up but perhaps you could hear in that wonderful passage that mixture of melancholy and buoyancy that enjoyment and relish when you're supposed to be serious or grim that is so distinctive of Dickens disaster and hilarity together and actually I think for Dickens as for mr. Micawber what's so wonderful about him but language his language is his consolation as it was Dickens is okay I've got a really good final language I save for later all right [Applause] that was John Mullen and the company for Charles Dickens Simon Schama from Leo Tolstoy how many of you read Tolstoy put up your hands not bad but not a majority I tell you why I'm asking you dear friends and that's because I think I know that Tolstoy in some sense would have hated the idea of who's winning and who's not for Tolstoy really in a war for example nobody wins in life somehow everybody wins and Johnny's is right that Tolstoy didn't really like Dickens he worshiped Dickens he actually heard Dickens in 1861 when he was in London he heard Dickens reads a Christmas carol in one of his performances and James's Hall in in Piccadilly and we don't know really quite what he had thought of Christmas Carol but them the thought struck me that actually Tolstoy's joke book is quite thin and he can bet your life there's not much in Tolstoy that would have made it to a panto I think it the way a Christmas Carol tears I think there was something what I want to try and do rather than win actually don't give a toss who wins because I love them both what I do care about and what I feel that count Leo would care about would try and persuade all those of you who never gone near Tolstoy so big so forbidding so daunting that he actually being inside Tolstoy's books is not so much reading as actually having a life with it the best thing that was ever said about Tolstoy I think was by the Russian writer isarc barber who said if the world could write itself it would write like Tolstoy now why is that Tolstoy who actually made one go out writing like Dickens in particular David Copperfield wrote it as his book called a childhood and ken's was translated very very quickly into russia and it's one of the most small Kishin awkward and forced and sentimental and disingenuous of all the things that Tolstoy did so what Tolstoy did was go to a different place and the different place that he went to was into the modern world he's as much part of our experience more sir perhaps than he was of the 19th century and what he did not want to do eventually was be theatrical like Dickens he doesn't actually have characters in his book he has people he couldn't imagine having the veneerings and a pink sniffs and the McRoberts and the magwitch's they are ordinary names of ordinary people Dickens of course wrote to perform he wrote for you he wrote for an audience Tolstoy only read out loud once in his life to a small group of family and friends in 1864 was very shy we know he'd entered all a lot of different parts but what he wanted to do really was throw open a window you could simply climb through that window and be in that world so that sometimes the writing compared to Dickens his great extravagant look at me applaud me theatricality is flat and limpid and sometimes even chilly and there's another reason for that too Tolstoy went to places Dickens didn't go namely to the war he went to yon Europe he went on a raid to a village with his brother Nikolai to Chechnya he served in the Crimean War he saw the full horror of war and I think for Toaster at that moment actually any kind of flamboyance disgusted him at the end of it very end of his writing life he came back to the experience he spoke many many languages including some caucasian languages like Turkmen he came back to Haddix an astonishing story some of the greatest things that Tolstoy ever did are short stories and this one it's called [ __ ] Murat it's a long short story he came to it and went back from it many times between 1896 and 1904 this is chapter from chapter 70 in the shortest in [ __ ] Murat and it's an account of what happens to a village in the Caucasus a Chechen village when the Russian army Rhea it has got through it two words which otherwise will sound very weird and out all is a Chechen village and the salia is a house and [ __ ] Murat is a Chechen chieftain who had been part of the resistance of the Russians when over now decided he'd go over to the Russians because he hated the local Imam and the story begins with [ __ ] Murat being received in this particular village but after the Russians had got through with it this is what happens the owl devastated by the raid was the one in which had Amuro to spent the night before his coming over to the Russians Sardo with whom [ __ ] Murat had stayed was leaving for the mountains with his family when the Russian has approached the owl when he came back to his own he found his sack Lea destroyed the roof had fallen in the doors and posts of a little gallery were burned down and the inside was before 'old his son the handsome boy with shining eyes who looked rapturously at [ __ ] Murat was brought dead to the mosque on a horse covered by a Booker he'd been stabbed in the back with a bayonet the fine looking woman who'd waited on [ __ ] Murat during his visit now in a smock torn in front reading her old sagging breasts with her hair on down stood over her son and clawed her face until it bled and wailed without ceasing Sardo took a pick and shovel and went with some relation is to dig a grave for his son the old grandfather sat by the wall at the destroyed sacked layer and whittling a little stick stared dully before him he'd just come back from his apiary the two haystacks formerly there had been burned the apricot and cherry trees he had planted and nursed were broken and scorched and worst of war the beehives had all been burned the wailing of women could be heard in all the houses and on the square where two more bodies had been brought the small children wailed along with their mothers hungry cattle who had nothing to eat also bellowed the older children did not play but look to their elders with frightened eyes the spring had been be fouled obviously on purpose so that it was impossible to take water from it the mosque was also be fouled and the mother and his assistants were cleaning it up the old heads of households gathered on the square and squatting down discussed their situation of hatred for the Russians no one even spoke the feeling that was experienced by all the Chechens big and small was stronger than hatred it was not hatred but a refusal to recognize these Russian dogs as human beings and such loathing disgust and bewilderment before the absurd cruelty of these beings that the wish to exterminate them like the wish to exterminate rats venomous spiders and wolves was as natural as a sense of self-preservation like Dickens Tolstoy was very interested in geography in specifics of place and indeed in nature nature is a real actor I think I would one of the things like John I don't at all want to be opposition on this but one of the things I think not Tolstoy does because he lives so much in the country he lives with the seasons so very much on on his estate that he's wonderful about animals and actually possibly you could make an argument I won't make it here that the very greatest thing he ever wrote was a short story called master or a man the cast of which are two peasants one is a peasant merchant and a horse AB a gelding and the haughty who head off into a snowstorm and it would be a spoiler to tell you with what consequences that is but nature is not capture nature is ferocious nature is extraordinary especially the Russian winter of course and there is a great fog passage 8 there in war and peace we we're now going to have a fog off actually you know that option families of fog offs you know they wouldn't let anyone look at them it was completely stumbling around but the fog for Tolstoy is a fog which actually hangs over the battlefield at Austerlitz and it's not the thing that John very cunningly and wisely I to love absolutely that opening of the accounts my dad performed it magnificently my dad should have met mr. Rohani I think but he goes on and on and folks and frogs and frogs and the fog eventually is a kind of piece of dramatic filmic play it settles around the hedge of the Lord Chief Justice but tell story has a real fog and it's the fog that is concealing it's the the in the morning of the fog before the battle the folder lifts from the height of the hill but the fog just stays in a foggy bottom and with tremendous tremendous kind of consequences and it's it's it's another kind of real fog the fog was so thick that though day was breaking one couldn't see 10p ahead bushes look like ignore must reads level places like cliffs and slopes everywhere on all sides want might run into an enemy invisible few paces away in the bottom where the action began the fog was still thick but al-bab Ovid had cleared but nothing of what was happening could be seen from above down below danger for the Russian army nine o'clock in the morning and unbroken sea of fog spread below but at the village of schlopp on its on the heights where Napoleon stood surrounded by marshals it was perfectly light over him was the clear blue sky and the enormous ball of a Sun like a huge hollow crimson float bobbed on the surface of the milky sea of fog fantastic surf and very often actually the great force of you being there is built up from these sharply perfectly described physical moments often the greatness of Tolstoy's work is built up from these little tiles of tiny details as well he is same time cosmic and imperious an Olympian and panoramic and might minut things my favorite little tile at sort of tessera really is when the Battle of Borodino incredibly bloody battle had happened and among its casualties are Prince Andrei and Anatole two antagonists and a field surgeon emerges from the tent of a field hospital Tolstoy describes him holding a cigar and I can't do it my old arthritic chronic hands between the thumb and the little finger why because the middle fingers are covered in blood and he doesn't want to light a cigar while blood is all over it reality a hard vivid brutal thing the other thing to introduce the next reading is that well I think actually Tolstoy has a grip upon a particular reality of the lives of women we heard this as wonderful exchange between Miss Havisham and Estella but so many of Tulsa's are so many of Dickens's women are either monsters or angels two monsters one has brought up the other monster in Great Expectations toss story it seemed to me actually and they both treated women badly Oh though Tolstoy loved his wife Sofia throughout his life or however strong me it was tossed Roy knew how women relate to each other and one passage I wanted we want now to give you is actually two sisters this is the so called subplot but it's terribly important from Anna Karenina their share bats key sisters kitty the young one dolly the old one they both suffered the whole famous opening of Anna Karenina is dolly share bat Sookie has been betrayed by her adulterous husband so she it somehow wants to keep the marriage together but she's distraught and warm down by what she has to go through Kitty the young one has turned down the man who really loves her mangled leather into his Tolstoy in disguise because she's actually in love with Vronsky the clothes source for whom Anna Karenina falls they come together as sisters that they come together in a kind of tortured passion [Applause] entering Kitty's small boudoir a pretty little pink room with dolls as young pink and gay as Kitty had been just two months earlier dolly remembered with what gaiety and love they had decorated this little room together last year her heart went cold when she saw Kitty sitting on the low chair nearest the door staring fixedly at a corner of the rug Kitty glanced at her sister and her cold somewhat severe expression did not change I'll leave now and stay put at home and you won't be allowed to visit me I would like to talk to you about what what else if not your grief I have no grief calm down kitty can you really think I don't know I know everything and believe me it's nothing we've walked on through it kitty was silent and her face had a stern expression he's not worth your suffering over him yes because he scorned me kitty said in a quavering voice don't talk about it don't why who told you that no one said that I am sure he was in love with you and is still in love but dark these condolences are the most terrible thing of all for me kitty cried out suddenly getting angry she turned on her chair flushed and quickly moved her fingers clutching the belt buckle she was holding now with one hand now with the other dolly knew this way her sister had of grasping something with her hands when she was in a temper she knew that Kitty was capable of forgetting herself in such a moment we're saying a lot of unnecessary and unpleasant things and Dolly wanted to calm her down but it was already too late what what if it you want to make me feel what Kitty was talking quickly though I was in love with a man who cared nothing for me and then I thought I'm dying of love for him and I'm told this by my sister who thinks that but that she's commiseration I don't want these pitying xand pretenses Kitty you are unsightly on the contrary III I see that you are upset but in her temper Kitty did not hear I have nothing to be distressed or comforted about I'm proud enough never to allow myself to love a man who does not love me but I'm not saying it one thing tell me the truth tell me did Levin speak to you the mention of Levin seemed to take away the loss of Kitty's self possession she jumped up from the chair flinging the buckle to the floor and with quick gestures of her hand began to speak why bring Levin into it too I don't understand why do you need to torment me I said and I repeat that I am proud and would never never do what you're doing go back to a man who's betrayed you who's fallen in love with another woman I don't understand I don't understand that Yuri but I can't and having said these words she glanced at her sister and seeing that dolly kept silent her head bowed sadly Kitty instead of leaving the room as she had intended sat down by the door and covering her face with a handkerchief bowed her head the silence lasted for some two minutes dolly was thinking about herself her humiliation which she always felt echoed especially painfully in her when her sister reminded her of it she had not expected such cruelty from her sister and was angry with her but suddenly she heard the rustling of a dress along with the sound of suppressed sobs bursting out and someone's arms encircled her neck from below kitty was kneeling before her so one happy she whispered guiltily for love is beloved's go often of the sunset in Dickens Agnes and David Dora says you know call me your wife child Tolstoy is the first of the great righteous I think it looks forward to Stromberg and Epson who actually understands love can make you obsessed I can turn bad it can turn it can be very unhappy flow there does that he's very very close to that I think and Anna Karenina one of the most extraordinary things in a passage we're going to read now is actually the point at which the two lovers Anna and Vronsky who should be in the throes of infatuated joy a cloud actually passes between them why because Anna has just told run skill tells Vronsky that she has told her husband what's going on and this is an extraordinary passage about how men and women lovers both respond in completely different ways Vronsky the magnificent military horse riding clothes horse only can think of himself fighting a duel that's what he thinks of immediately that is not what's on Anna's mind let's read this [Applause] you're not angry there's I sent for you it was necessary for me to see you serious and stern set of her lips he could see behind the veil immediately changed his state of mind I angry but how did you come why here never mind come we must talk he understood something had happened that this meeting was not going to be joyful in our presence he had no will of his own not knowing the reason for anxiety but he already felt that this same anxiety involuntarily communicated itself to him what is it what she walked a few steps in silence gathering her courage and suddenly stopped I didn't tell you yesterday but on the way home with Alexei Alexandrovich I told him everything I said that I could not be his wife but I told him everything he listened to her involuntary leaning his whole body towards her as if wishing in this way to suffer the difficulty of her situation but as soon as she'd said it she suddenly straightened up in his face acquired a proud and stern expression yes yes it's better a thousand times better I understand how difficult it was but she wasn't listening to his word she was reading his thoughts in the expression this face she couldn't have known that his expression reflected the first thought that occurred to him that a duel was now inevitable the thought of a duel had never entered her head and therefore she explained this moment or expression of stern --less differently having received her husband's letter she already knew in the depths of her soul everything would remain as before that she would be unable to score on her position to leave her son unite herself for their lover the morning spent at princess first grace had confirmed her still more in that but all the same this meeting was extremely important to her she hoped it would change their situation and saver if at this news he should say to her resolutely passionately without a moment's hesitation abandon everything and fly away with me she would leave her son and go with him but the news did not produce in him what she expected the only inseam insulted by something was the least bit difficult it got done by itself I understand I understand he interrupted taking the letter without reading it and trying to calm her I wished for one thing I asked for one thing to break up this situation in order to devote my life to your happiness are you telling me that I possibly doubt it if I did is that coming France Key says suddenly pointing at two ladies coming towards them maybe there nois he hastened to turn down a sidewalk drawing her after him as I said that is not the point I cannot doubt that but there is what he writes if here is what he writes to me read it again is in the first moment of the news of her break with her husband Veronica while reading the letter involuntarily yielded to the natural impression aroused in him by his attitude towards the insulted husband now as he held the letter in his hands he involuntarily pictured to himself the challenge she'd probably find today or tomorrow the duel itself during which he'd Samba the same cold and proud expression now in his face having fired into the air awaiting the insulted husband shot and at once there flashed into his head what he himself had thought that morning that it was better not to bind himself and he knew he couldn't tell her this thought having read the letter he raised his eyes to her and there was no firmness in his look she understood that once he already thought it over to himself she knew that whatever he might tell her he would not say everything he thought and she understood her last hope had been disappointed this was not what she'd expect one of the most [Music] you know straight on to the next thing because another great thing the extraordinary felt that um he sort of had mixed feelings didn't like theatricality so much because the great drama in all Tolstoy's writing the greatest drama are interior monologues he invents stream of consciousness writing I'm sure James Joyce actually took a lot often the right that the speech is broken and though these gaps were is actually said is often betrayed by body language rather than actually the words themselves and one of the greatest passages a stream of consciousness so fierce in and it's taken directly from Tolstoy his life is when levin ii hero really the hero of the male hero of the book and this again is out of time it speaks to us all how many parents in here you're all paris oh except for kitsch who is going to be one as well as a star this is what happens when levin is waiting for the birth of his child his wife kitty he did not know whether it was late or early the candles are all burning low Dali had just come to the study to suggest that the doctor lie down Levin sat there listening to the doctor tell about a quack mesmerist and watching the ashes of his cigarette it was a period of rest and he become oblivious he's entirely forgotten what was going on now he listened to the doctor story and understood it suddenly there was a scream unlike anything he had ever heard the scream was so terrible that Levin didn't even jump up but holding his breath gave the doctor a frightened questioning look the doctor cocked his head to one side listening and smiled approvingly it was also extraordinary that nothing any longer astonished Levin probably it should be so he thought and went on fitting whose scream was it he jumped up ran tiptoe to the bedroom went round Lizaveta Petrovna in the princess and stood in his place at the head of the bed the screaming had ceased but something was changed now what he did not see her understand nor did he want to see and understand but he saw it from Lizaveta Petrovna space her face was Stern and pale and still just as resolute her jaws twitched a little in their eyes were fixed on kitty Kitty's burning tormented face with a strand of hair stuck to her sweaty forehead was turned to him and sought his eyes her raised hands after his seizing his hands in her sweaty hands she started pressing them to her face she spoke quickly he could and tried to smile but suddenly her face became distorted then she pushed him away from her go she cried and again came that scream Levin flashed his head and ran out of the room he knew that all was now lost leaning his head against the doorpost he stood in the next room and heard a shrieking and howling such as he had never heard before and he knew that these cries were coming from what once had been kitty he had long ceased wishing for the child he now hated this child he did not even wish for her to live now he only wished for an end to this terrible suffering doctor what is it what is it my god she said season is not to buy the arm as he came in Amma doctors face was so serious as he said it that Levin understood this nearly over to mean she was dying forgetting himself he ran into the bedroom the first thing he saw was there's a better Petrovna space it was still more Stern and frowning Kitty's face was not there in place of it where it used to be was something dreadful both in its strange looking in the sound that came from it he leant his head against the wooden bedstead feeling his heart was bursting the terrible screaming would not stop it became still more terrible and then as of reaching the final limit of the terrible it suddenly stopped Levin did not believe his ears but there could be no doubt the screaming stopped and there was a quiet stirring a rustle and quick breathing and her faltering alive gentle and happy voice softly said it's over he raised his head her arms resting strength ously on the blanket remarkably beautiful and quiet she silently looked at him and tried but was unable to smile [Music] [Music] it you ain't heard nothing yet it nearly is over but the last the last section we're going to give you is actually my favorite in all of Tull stories right here it comes from great climatic moments in war and peace and toast oh really is that's a lot of people of notice two writers he's the writer of the of power of the public world of the absurdity of history but he's also the writer of view as you've been listening to of the intensity and complicated truth of the passions between men and women between brothers and brothers and friends and sisters and children and parents and all these things come together at a particular moment the moment is this Natacha the extraordinary exuberant girl at the heart of war and peace who's based actually on toasters and wife's younger sister tatyana tanya has been engaged be married the cold brilliant Prince Andrei who like an idiot and said women have to wait for a year to see if it really is going to be good and during the year which is unbearable for someone of Natasha's warm blood she almost elopes she does she falls in love with someone who's already married as we discovered Anatole Caraga and a beautiful no-goodnik technical Russian term and and she's discovered and she's disgraced and what happens to this life force of war and peace is that she becomes ill she hates everybody she hates her family she who had loved them all she hates herself she's close to dying of all this terrible feeling and then eventually somehow the spectral spectral race of a girl comes back to life and looking on all the time is pure bezel cough another version of Tolstoy Pierre who wanted Andre and Natasha to be married but who finds himself caught between them he wants to be a friend to Russia but something inside his heart and his body and his head also wants to be some thing more most of all he wants to somehow he can't he knows he can't bring their Tasha and Pierre back together but most of all watch no you can't of course not you told Tolstoy know this you know let's just do it let's just do this it Natasha wasted with a pale and stern face not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected her to be was standing in the middle of the drawing-room when Pierre appeared at the doorway she became flustered obviously undecided whether to go to him or wait for him Pierre hastily went up to her he thought that she would give him her hand as always but coming close to him she stopped breathing heavily in lowering her arms lifelessly in exactly the same pose in which he came out to the middle of the room to sing but with quite a different expression Piazza curvature Prince Bolkonsky was your friend is your friend she corrected herself it seemed to her that everything only was and that now it was all different he told me then to turn to you Pierre sniffed silently looking up at her up to then he had reproached her in his soul and had tried to despise her but now he felt such pity for her that there was no room in his soul for approach he's here now tell him to forgive me she stopped him began to breathe still more rapidly but did not cry yes yes I'll tell him but he did not know what to say Natasha was Evan Lee afraid of the thought that might have occurred to Pierre no I know it's all over no it it can never be I'm only tormented by the wrong I've done him tell him only that I beg him to forgive me forgive me for everything her whole body shook and she sat down on a chair a feeling of pity such as he had never experienced before overflowed Pierre's soul I'll tell him I'll tell him everything wants more but I'd like to know one thing what I'd like to know whether you loved Pierre did not know what to call Anatole and he blushed at the thought of him whether you loved that that bad man don't going bad but I don't know I don't know anything she began to cry again a still greater feeling of pity tenderness and love took hold of Pierre he felt tears flowing behind his spectacles and hoped they would not be noticed let's not talk anymore my friend it seems so strange suddenly the Natasha to hear that meek tender heartfelt voice let's not talk my friend I'll tell him everything but one thing I ask you consider me your friend and if you need help advice or simply to pour out your soul to somebody not now but when your soul is clear remember me I'll be happy to if I'm able she was about to leave the room appear held her back by the hand he knew he had something more to tell her that when he said it he was surprised at his words himself stop it stop it you have your whole life ahead of you as me know for me all is lost all is lost if i were not i but the handsomest brightest and best man in the world and i was free i would go on my knees this minute and ask for your hand and your love Natacha for the first time in many days wept tears of gratitude and tenderness and after glancing at pierre left the room pierre to following her almost ran out to the front hall holding back the tears of tenderness and happiness that choked him put on his coat and missing the sleeves got into the sleigh where to now sir ask the coachman where to Pierre asked himself where can I go now not to the club or to pay visits all people seem so pitiful so poor in comparison with a feeling of tenderness and love he experienced in comparison with that softened grateful glance she'd given him at the last moment through her tears her said Pierre throwing open the best skin coat on his broad joyfully breathing chest despite the ten degrees of frost it was cold and clear above the city semi dark streets above the black roof stood the stark starry sky only looking at the sky did Pierre not feel the insulting baseness of everything earthly compared with the height his soul had risen to at the entrance to our bat square the huge expanse of the dark starry night opened out to peers eyes almost in the middle of that sky over precious dense key boulevards to the huge bright comet of the Year 1812 surrounded strewn with stars and all skies but different from them in its closeness to the earth it's white light and long raised tail the same comet which presaged as they said all sorts of horrors and the end of the world but for Pierre this bright star with its long luminous tail did not arouse any frightening feeling on the contrary Pierre his eyes wet with tears gaze joyfully at this bright star which having flown with inexpressible speed through immeasurable space on its parabolic course suddenly like an arrow piercing the earth seemed to have struck here it's one chosen spot in the black sky and stopped its tail raised energetically it's white light shining and playing among the countless other shimmering stars it seemed to Pierre that this star answered fully to what was in his softened and encouraged soul now blossoming into new life garbage on and company over there with Simon genre and company for leo tolstoy I'd like to ask the company a question this is I guess a playwrights question to you anybody can answer how do you as actors prepare to come into pros as opposed to text to play text because there are different machines so as as as actors and type of building working do you enter it differently or is it the same anybody I think even if you're on your own you have to say it out loud that's what I experience with this because reading both Dickens and Tolstoy in your head was very different how it came out on the stand the feeling of it moving through you when you said it out loud so saying it out loud as much as possible to get a proper handle on then the difference as it moves through you as opposed to it working in your head was really interesting I really actually enjoyed that particularly when you're playing a character it's awesome question because I think round about how Tolstoy wrote Dickens wrote in serial form had to check toast why not I think no story I mean it was very shortly Anna Karenina he wrote he started in 1873 and it took him I think was seven years to write war and peace 5,000 pages of drafts ODEs to his wife who so he was very very slow and painstaking and Anna Karenina that he thought in 1873 he's got it nailed and he didn't took him another four years the first draft of Anna Karenina actually the the husband the anak run on top is a kind of hero and the more he thought about it and allure is the kind of scarlet woman and he's just waiting for her to come to a sticky end that absolutely changed in the relentless redrafting so that she's fully Ambu so he was sort of thee I think he would have loved to have actually turned it all out like for you as actors research this is your research this is what you do as you're going into a role and I'm interested in the difference out for you building physically voice because you're building as you're working with character and a play text is much different you come on stage and you have a script that's a different thing you have huge over your lights you have all these things and you guys that work you all have picked up a text and entered it so just wondering if there's anything you can share with the audience especially young actors young theatre people going into it for the first time how do you enter how do you enter this I mean I interesting thing about both Tolstoy and Dickens it is the richness of description you you know with the play you just have the the dialogue and so I'm trying to think of you think of Pinter or Beckett or your look at you're basically looking for subtext because underneath the meaning of the things people say are the things people mean sometimes they don't say what they mean whereas with Tolstoy in Dickens you've got these long passages of where the both writers invite the reader into the mind of the protagonist or the character so that Tolstoy peace with Levin waiting for Kitty to give birth it's actually in the third person but it's written with such a momentum that it feels it like it's in the first person in some way yeah and so actually that's true of all if you're if you're ever in a situation as an actor where you're there's there's a book it's a it's such a blessing because you can go to the book and look at all this interior tea to shore up the exterior which is what we have to present as actors so that's that's okay go okay cuz cuz Simon I don't know if you noticed rather like the author of war and peace can I ask you something as you when you're doing this yes I'd like you to tell us because all of these these novels are immortal they live now they don't live in the past they live now in Dickens what women and as part of your your answer what women for you live now now who speaks to us now well I think I think that the I chose I suppose that exchange between Estella and Miss Havisham because in it's weird and twisted way it seems to me as vivid as it's would have seemed to its first readers and you know she mishaps and says said call me mad and this teller says no you're not mad and it's true that and I knew Simon we mention it that Dickens does terrifying women and angelic women and that she's not top-notch on his sexual politics of his fiction but I think in general actually I miss my appeal to the audience there's much less embarrassing or excessive or in poor taste in Tolstoy Tolstoy was a count you heard Simon describing his writing method come on and on and on and on Dickens wrote compendium extravagantly within this sort of tiny bits incredible discipline of the of the the periodical form and I think that he gave us characters if you like out a fantasy including women like a stellar and Miss Havisham but I suppose what I'm saying is fantasies truer than reality in a way or find the fantastic is be truer than the realistic if you want the realistic you want Tolstoy you want George Eliot's but it's because Dickens has a handle on the fantastic including in his depiction of characters like a stellar and Miss Havisham that that his words live on in our thoughts and in our sayings and I sort of think in our dreams really we just say he in a sense invented a kind of our secular life in in some ways I think that I think he gave us like all great great novelists and I think comparisons are odorous you know I mean I think more than Tolstoy in this sense he gave us characters that I mean I have a weird domestic life and I'm sorry Mike my wife and I say things like a bit of a uriah he hmm pushing that way I mean he gave us a kind of psychological vocabulary and that's not the same he didn't give us anybody as psychologically complex as Dorothea Brook in middle marched he gave us sort of strange strange distorted examples of the way we all are sometimes and that's that's a different kind of thing and that seems to be something that actually kind of survives more vividly thank you very much open I'm going to open it you promise me okay I'm gonna give you that's on him you got it but you got limited times give me money give me a minute and then do it well I think actually I even though I I Joan is absolutely right that Dickens is I mean it's more than ever it seems ludicrous that we should have this gladiatorial slam but you know that's what we have absolutely right Dickens gave us the kind of extravagant possibilities the Father frontier of the human imagination and we need that and nobody did it other than Shakespeare exactly like him Tolstoy when I said Tolstoy I love Dickens and transcended it what Tolstoy wanted to do in the greatest things he wrote and he carried on writing great things all in great fat novels was to make us look the reality of life sound so bleep so pedantic in a way but Tolstoy actually could because he had such sharp eyes and he could actually translate poetically what she saw into this exquisite language that everything we do going to sleep at night playing with children being terrified in war has a kind of startling startling enhance crispness and freshness things that we think we do suddenly seem as though we'd never done them before very interestingly he became of course an impossibly sententious moral teacher there's one wonderful moment where he said I'll actually I'm very happy to entertain any problems that students might have so two students came a long way from the Urals to see Tolstoy and they say the servant answer the door yes niya Paulina and they say we've led Nikolai which you know has said we can ask him any questions and the master said I'm not refusing and he goes to our story and says Tosca is young men of thousands of miles from New York so she said I'm not in and then immediately he said that he bronzed the door and said young man I've sinned I've sinned what's your question and they said well leveler can i that you promised you say is that is wrong to resist evil with violence but what if a tiger sprang at you from the jungle and Toaster he looks through them and said young man such things very seldom happen you know so he gonna be impossible nope nothing like I promise tough very lasting a moral teacher called Baba Rican gave him his two novels to read and Tolstoy said they're incredibly bad and I'll tell you why they're bad and this is what he says and it sums up the Tolstoy case the aim of an artist is not to solve a problem irrefutable but to make people love life in all its manifestations if I were told that I could write a novel whereby I might irrefutable established the correct point of view on all social problems I would not even devote two hours on such a novel but if I were told the what I should write would be read in about twenty years time by those who are now children that they would laugh and cry over it and love life I would devote all my own life and all my energies to it that was gorgeous that was gorgeous but you know who are involved bill they would give you the hook at this point right but that was gorgeous all right here are the final tallies before these distinguished gentleman spoke to us and their advocates we were 44% for Dickens 40% for Tolstoy and 16% for decays the undecided now after debate we are 42 percent for Dickens 53% for Tolstoy [Applause] [Music] before we go I have to say my preference because everybody well the actors didn't look actors should do this as well but yes after the company first go I mean you got to pick one sorry your company which one who would you who okay [Applause] mr. West yeah ticking jump right Dickens because my dad and then we're gonna get off the stage if there is another life that we were all given to live one of the things I like to live and do in it is read Russian so I made toast alright so thank you all [Applause] let's have a round of applause for this magnificent company who come out to the foie gras for our to advocate Simon Schama one and John Mulligan Wow round of applause for intelligence squared who presented this and a round of applause to yourself because I want to say I don't know if the company felt this but I just felt the intelligence the attention and the whole energy just coming this way you made it so much easier for all those we were nervous so thank you

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 495,414

Rating: 4.9593229 out of 5

Keywords: Dickens, Tolstoy, Literature, Tom Hiddleston, Bonnie Greer, Simon Schama, Kit Kingsley, Zawe Ashton, Julia Sawalha, Timothy West, John Mullan, War and Peace, Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, English Literature, Russian Literature

Id: gLXpYJDdEUI

Length: 94min 41sec (5681 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 21 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Lamia_tepes]

Mr. Hiddlestons reading of the labour scene was frantic. I'm exhausted haha

[u/Tsukikage12]

intelligence squared is actually really cool. I love this particular episode. Obviously our Hiddles excelled.

[u/gelite67]

I done learnt a new word: interiority.

And we all know why Tolstoy won.

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