Mary Hobson's life changed forever when her young husband suffered irreversible brain damage. Following a breakdown brought on by caring for both him and their four children, Mary started writing fiction. At the age of fifty-four the first of her four novels was published. Her life changed again some years later when she was given a copy of War and Peace. Determined to read it in the original, she decided to study Russian. Mary became an undergraduate for the first time in her sixties and eventually completed her PhD at London University aged seventy-four. She developed an abiding passion for Pushkin, becoming an acclaimed translator and travelling between London and Moscow. Now in her late eighties and still working daily on his poems and letters, Mary looks back on what Pushkin called 'the feast of life'.