Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and...

"The seventies began with a spectacular obscenity trial and ended with Margaret Thatcher quoting St. Francis of Assisi on the steps of Downing Street. In the years between, the sixties social revolution settled into a variety of movements: feminist, gay, anarchist, punk. However, economic misery, burgeoning union power and carnage in Northern Ireland characterize the decade. The miners' strike and the three-day week toppled the Conservative Government...