5 Things You Should Know Before Watching War and Peace

With BBC One embarking on an adaptation of one of the most epic novels of all time, here are 5 facts you might want to know before sitting back and watching the drama unfold...

1. There are over 600 characters in the book, but the story revolves around 5 main families

2. It is the 20th longest book at 1,440 pages, but is shorter than Les Miserables

3. Before naming his work War and Peace, Tolstoy had named it The Year 1805

4. The whole work is actually made up of 4 volumes and 2 epilogues

5. Some of the characters' speech in the text is French. This is because French was the adopted language of the Russian aristocracy. In later editions of the book, these sections were translated back into Russian.