The author had two uncles, Alex and Pyotr, both decorated generals fighting Napoleon from 1805 on. This is the same time Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice and there are many parallels in girly gossip, intrigues, society dances to find a husband, playing the spinet and singing. The men show preference to drinking whole bottles of cognac and duelling to kill the time. Count Tolstoy had close family relations to inform him accurately of what happened in Petersburg, Moscou etc. The sceneries with soldiers are very accurate, impressive using thousands of figurants. They are brief. The pride and prejudice prevails in maintaining so called honour causing a lot of hurt. I see War and Peace as actually being about the failure of humans to live and love well. The main character, like Lizzy Bennet, is here the young stunning Countess Natasha Rostova, the French actress Clemence Poesy. Seeing her, an impressionable beauty with round eyes clear as deep ponds does so much to impress the viewers. The Novel could be called a Romance of Countess Rostova, rather a human drama. Why is PEACE so boring to the Russian men, then in 1810… This movie is truly moving

I remember diligently watching this wonderful television production when it was first shown here back in the seventies. It was memorable then and still is today. I thought that when I bought and viewed this time, that perhaps the production and acting would have dated. Not so, this series is mesmerising and my wife (who had not seen it before), and I played it over 10 nights! While all the lead actors were well cast, Anthony Hopkins as Pierre is superb. Obviously he was quite a young man, in this production, but his considerable talent was evident then. Overall a great production that we will look at again and again