‘I lost £2m libel case but my wife saved our home’
Historian Nikolai Tolstoy tells Dan Moore how his father’s escape from the Bolsheviks shaped him
Count Nikolai Tolstoy, 87, is the head of the eponymous Russian noble family, which was part of the Romanov court until the tsar’s assassination in 1917. A relative of War and Peace novelist Leo Tolstoy, the count is a renowned author, historian and monarchist. He’s also the stepson of the late Patrick O’Brian, author of such historical naval novels as Master and Commander.
In 1989 Tolstoy lost a £2m libel claim against the former Conservative Party chairman Lord Aldington. The case centred on whether Aldington had authorised the repatriation of Cossacks to Stalin’s regime at the end of the Second World War. Many of those repatriated were subsequently executed.
Seven years later Tolstoy won an appeal against the size of the award at the European Court of Human Rights on the basis that his right to freedom of expression had been curtailed.
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST JOB AND HOW MUCH WERE YOU PAID? My first job was working for three months digging drains on a mountainside for the Forestry Commission at Glen Doll in the Scottish Highlands. My weekly wage was, as I recall, 6 pounds and 10 shillings and we were fed and housed at the forestry hostel. I felt this to be a princely sum for an 18-year-old.
On my return journey to Kent I bought rare books on Scottish history from an antiquarian bookseller in Edinburgh, which today occupy a prized place in my library, so I can’t complain.
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAREER? I taught for two years at a preparatory school at Whitchurch-on-Thames after I was invalided out of the British Army with a spinal injury in 1954. I was paid £300 a year, which again allowed me to live a pleasant lifestyle.
As my food and lodgings were included, I was content with my salary, which permitted me to enjoy the long holidays and continue purchasing antiquarian books.
WHEN DID YOU DECIDE TO BECOME A WRITER?
I have never thought much about money per se, although for the early years of my adult life my remunerasequence tion was by worldly standards modest. I always wanted to be a writer. I’m primarily a historian, but it was only as a result of initial fortuitous opportunities that I was able to make a full-time career of writing, beginning in the 1970s. Writing is hard work, owing to the enormous amount of research I have to conduct, but unfailingly satisfying.
WHEN DID YOU FEEL YOU WERE ACTUALLY MAKING MONEY RATHER THAN MAKING ENDS MEET?
I first felt I was making a respectable living when I received a substantial advance of £3,000 in 1975 for my book Victims of Yalta.
This history chronicled the lives of Soviet citizens who found themselves under Nazi rule. The 1945 Yalta conference decreed that all Soviet citizens were to be repatriated, which led to either decades in labour camps or the death sentence for millions. Later I got £65,000 for Stalin’s Secret War, which further affirmed my career choice.
Incidentally, in about 1984 I received advances of £250,000 from Bantam Press for my Arthurian historical novel The Coming of the King.
I received a similar sum from an American publisher. When the first offer came in I was staying with Patrick O’Brian and my mother at their home in the south of France. We were at the time undergoing one of our perennial crises with our bank. Patrick cheerfully advised me to tell the manager on my return: “If you don’t get your act together, I’ll buy the bank!”
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO BUDDING HISTORICAL WRITERS? Obviously, the likely course for a serious historian is to pursue an academic career.
At times I saw the advantages of financial security, although academia is not particularly well-paid. But in the event my pursuit of what proved to be politically controversial topics made total independence actually essential.
WHAT FINANCIAL LESSONS DID YOU LEARN FROM YOUR PARENTS? I fear I never learned anything about finance from my parents. I fancy it was as a consequence of my father’s terrifying escape as a child from the Bolsheviks in 1920 that he was strangely secretive about such matters. He was also under pressure from my stepmother to keep even the smallest sums from me.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR
BEST INVESTMENT?
Our first house, which we bought in the Somerset countryside in 1972 for £26,000. With our foot in the door, we were able to move upwards and after two successive moves we bought the lovely Jacobean house and surrounding land where we have lived for the past 40 years.
Incidentally, as I am somewhat innuthese merate, my wife, Georgina, makes most of our financial decisions.
This situation inadvertently resulted in what was surely our happiest financial decision. When, in 1989, I was ordered to pay £2m for allegedly libelling Lord Aldington, I was obliged to declare myself bankrupt. Well, before legal difficulties arose, we had raised a bank loan on the security of our present home.
For no particular reason that we recall, we had arranged for this to be in my wife’s name rather than jointly.
Since the house represented pretty well our only exigible asset, the conwas that I possessed nothing that Aldington could take, so our home was saved. Sometimes fate lends a helping hand.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR WORST INVESTMENT?
I have always been hopeless with figures, beginning with my threetimes failure to pass my mathematics O-level.
However, despite my incompetence in financial matters, I don’t recall making a bad investment.
A healthy recognition of my inadequacy makes me trust the professionals, to say nothing of my financially competent wife.
‘I’m a spender, primarily on books. I have about 12,000 but have never had any of them valued’
ARE YOU A SPENDER OR A SAVER? I’m afraid I’m primarily a spender – almost entirely on books, of which I have at present about 12,000. I inherited the fine library of my stepfather, Patrick O’Brian, when he died in 2000. Fortunately, we shared a love of the 18th century. I have never had any of my books valued, so regrettably cannot estimate their current value.
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST INDULGENCE?
My biggest indulgence is attending dinners of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, a convivial 18th-century dining society in London.
The society provides me, and Georgina, with an especial treat, largely for its convivial membership, restricted to 24 since its founding in 1735, and for its regress into 18th-century rites, toasts and so on, as well as the blue tailcoat and buff waistcoat uniform and a shared love of that enticing past era.