Russia’s novelists have enriched English literature from the first translations of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky onwards, and our knowledge of twentieth-century Russia has been ennobled by understanding the courage of its great poets. To mark the fiftieth anniversary both of the Translators’ Association and of the first English translation of Dr Zhivago, Dmitry Bykov, visiting from Moscow, introduces his ground-breaking new biography of Boris Pasternak, and Professors Jon Stallworthy and Angela Livingstone speak about their own involvement with Pasternak over many years. Elaine Feinstein, whose new novel, The Russian Jerusalem, includes Boris Pasternak as a character, takes the Chair.

Recorded on Monday 14 April 2008.