Orlando Figes on writing history, radioactive fungi, and why Madame Bovary is the greatest novel ever written

Send us Fan MailHow do we synthesize a 1000-plus years of history into a 300–page book. The historian Orlando Figes, who has made the study of Russia his lifelong work, shows us how in his new book, The Story of Russia.  Coming at a moment when Russia's history is being used as a pretext for the war in Ukraine, the timing could not be more pertinent. In part two of the show, the historian shares his passion for Gustav Flaubert's great novel, Madame Bovary.  Figes has published ten books on Russian and European history, including the prizewinning study of the Russian Revolution, A People’s Tragedy, and has been a historical consultant on films such as Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightlye, and a BBC adaptation of War & Peace. Born in London in 1958, his mother was Eva Figes, a Jewish immigrant who fled Nazi Germany with her parents and would go on to become an acclaimed novelist herself, and perhaps a seminal influence on her son.