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Лёв Николаевич Толстой! I have come to Tula and your estate of Yasnaia Polyana - like many an English pilgrim before me - to wish you happy birthday!
This is birch avenue at the entrance to Yasnaia Polyana
And here's the lake on the estate where Tolstoy's wife Sofia is said to have tried to drown herself after her husband ran away from home in October 1810
I deliver a eulogy (also wishing for better Anglo-Russian relations) to those gathered to celebrate Tolstoy's 190th birthday. A political speech is definitely what Tolstoy would have given on such an occasion...
The Tolstoy dining room at Yasnaia Polyana. Here Tolstoy received guests from around the world. The left hand picture of Tolstoy is of him at 48, by Kramskoi. That on the right is of him at 59 by Repin. The women are his eldest daughter Tatyana, and wife Sofia.
This little desk is that on which Tolstoy's wife Sofia wrote out several drafts of War and Peace. Tolstoy had poor sight and a barely-legible hand, which Sofia could read and transcribe for the printer.
This is the sofa on which Tolstoy, and most of his siblings and 13 children, and two of his grandchildren, were born.
And this same room, the one with the sofa, is the one that Tolstoy made his his study in the last decade of his life, because it was located next to his bedroom. Here he wrote his last plays, his tract against Shakespeare, and his anti-death-penalty works.
This is the phonograph that Thomas Edison brought to Yasnaia Polyana as a gift for Tolstoy. On it the first recording of his voice was made.
This is Tolstoy's bedroom in the last years of his life. Above it hangs a portrait of his eldest daughter, Tatiana. On the left hangs his peasant smock, which was in his own lifetime nicknamed a 'Tolstovka'
And here are his dumbells. Readers of Anna Karenina will remember that Levin uses weights when he is feeling stressed.
Here's the thick-walled, ground floor room - a former pantry - which Tolstoy made his study in the 1860s, and 1880s-90s. Here he wrote much of War and Peace
Here's a photo of how the room looked when it was Tolstoy's study. He kept his farming implements to hand, so that he could go straight from writing to labour on his land without the hassle of visiting another room on his way out..
The view from the ground floor study in which Tolstoy wrote most of War and Peace b
The bed on which Tolstoy was laid out after his body was brought back from Astapovo station, where he died. Thousands came to pay their respects to him here. Here he wrote Anna Karenina. The bust is of his beloved brother Nikolai, whose early death from TB appears in the novel. N
Above the bust of his eldest brother is a portrait of one of his favourite English authors, Charles Dickens
Tolstoy's grave, without a headstone, deep in the forest on his estate, in a beautiful glade - as he had wished.
