John Julius-Norwich

The stranger on the train

Sixty years on, <em>John Julius Norwich</em> begins to wonder who his travelling companion through France might have been, whose anecdote about the Tolstoys he has been re-telling all his life

issue 22 September 2012

What a pleasure it was to be reminded in a ‘Life and Letters’ column by Allan Massie (28 July) of Desmond MacCarthy. He was an old friend of my parents’ and, in the immediate postwar years, a fairly frequent visitor to their house in Chantilly, outside Paris. One Friday afternoon — it must I think have been 1950 or 1951 — we were sitting opposite each other as the train rattled through Normandy. I was at that time reading Russian at Oxford and was struggling through War and Peace in the original. Not surprisingly, the book caught Desmond’s eye. ‘Did I ever tell you,’ he murmured in that wonderful velvety voice of his, ‘did I ever tell you that I knew the Tolstoys?’

For a moment I thought I must have misheard him, but he went on: ‘Yes, I had a letter of introduction and I went to stay for a few days at Yasnaya Polyana.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in