INSIDE Rees-Mogg mangles the Victorians What a carve up! 1960s town planning Why alpha males do hug, after all

omission that may be attributable to facts in Grossman’s own life: his own mother was among those murdered at Berdichev, and for the rest of his life he felt guilty for not having brought her to live with him in Moscow.

Popoff ’s biography offers useful context to how Grossman contemplated death and his own mortality at an early age – Berdichev and Kiev changed hands 14 times during the Civil War – and how Russia’s future was a central topic as he grew up. But can I implore her, and all other biographers with the same habit, to stop identifying the novelist in his or her fictional characters, such as when she talks about “[Grossman’s] 1935 story ‘Four Days’ in which he portrays himself in Kolya, the doctor’s teenaged son”, or “in [his novel] Glückauf he portrays himself in the character of the bespectacled engineer”? Try writing a novel: you’ll soon find that a novelist has to dismantle, not

with her army major husband (note the details again, the pillowcase and milk bottle):

“Tamara! Tamara!” called Berozkin – and a young woman in shoes held together with string, with a bag over her shoulders, suddenly froze. Beside her stood a little girl who looked about five years old. She too was carrying a bag, sewn from a pillowcase.

Berozkin walked towards them, still holding the bottle of milk.

The woman stared at the commander coming towards her with a bottle of milk, then cried out, “Ivan! Vanya! My darling Vanya!”

And this cry was so frightening, so charged with complaint, horror, grief, reproach and happiness that everyone who heard it flinched, as if from a burn or some other sudden physical pain.

The woman ran forward and flung her arms around Berozkin’s neck…

Grossman displays a tireless curiosity about people under stress from tectonic events