Iain Pears

Writer Iain Pears tells the love story of Larissa Salmina and Francis Haskell who felt out of place on their respective sides of the Iron Curtain but instantly found an enduring bond when they met in a restaurant on the back streets of Vienna in 1962.

Salmina was the daughter of a Soviet army officer who survived the siege of Leningrad. She escaped as a teenager and lived in the Urals surrounded by Spanish revolutionaries. After the war, she became keeper of Italian drawings at the Hermitage and was involved in a number of many escapades, including stealing a Matisse from the Italian government. Francis was the grandson of an Iraqi Jew and felt out of place in England. He was lonely and self-doubting and an art historian at Cambridge. Pears says they represented a community of artists, exiles and academics who only felt safe and comfortable when away from home and in the company of foreigners.

Pears is author of bestselling books including An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Dream of Scipio, Stone’s Fall and Arcadia. He is also author of a series of detective novels and articles on artistic, financial and historical subjects.