Parallel Lives by Iain Pears: From Russia, with love - to an old Etonian

Daily Mail​

24-04-2025

PARALLEL LIVES by Iain Pears (William Collins £18.99, 288pp)
When Francis Haskell and Larissa Salmina met in Venice in the summer of 1962, no one could have predicted that these two very different people were destined for each other.
Francis was an uptight Englishman, prone to bouts of depression and unsure about whether he was homosexual. Larissa, who was Russian, had lived through the horrors of the siege of Leningrad and the terror of Stalin's purges, yet was optimistic, adventurous and fiercely patriotic.
'Neither of them expected to fall in love and neither of them particularly welcomed it,' writes Pears in this quirky book.
Francis, the grandson of an Iraqi Jew, was brought up to be an English gentleman, going to Eton and then King's College, Cambridge. Larissa, born in Leningrad (now St Petersburg), came from minor Russian nobility but her father, a soldier, had cannily thrown his lot in with the Communists during the Russian Revolution.
In 1941, 11-year-old Larissa and her mother were trapped in Leningrad when it was besieged by the Germans. To survive, the two women ate anything they could find – even cats. 'There were corpses lying on our stairs… there were corpses lying in the courtyard,' Larissa recalled.
Somehow this failed to dent her natural exuberance. She studied Fine Arts in Moscow and landed a prized job at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, where she specialised in Italian art. In 1962, she was chosen to lead the Soviet delegation to the Venice Biennale.
Francis was by now librarian of Cambridge University's fine art faculty. He was introduced to Larissa in a restaurant in Venice and they talked till one in the morning. He found her 'wholly delightful, full of enthusiasm… exceedingly intelligent and cultivated.' Although Larissa told him she was married to a Russian naval officer, he began pursuing her.
One night, when it was clear Francis had no idea how to move their relationship beyond friendship, Larissa 'decided it was time to take charge of the situation'.
Their path to a life together was far from smooth. Larissa had to secure a divorce from her first husband and there were endless bureaucratic hurdles before they could marry in Moscow in 1965. She was eventually allowed to move to England thanks to an accommodating KGB officer at the Soviet embassy in London.
Francis, who was appointed professor of history of art at Oxford University, was a changed man after his marriage. His self-doubt receded and Larissa became 'the focal point of his world, giving him life and purpose'. Larissa, who left home with great reluctance, became a renowned expert on Russian art.
The book ends shortly after Larissa arrives in England, though Pears – author of An Instance Of The Fingerpost and a friend and neighbour of the couple – tell us they were extremely happy, joyfully visiting up to five museums a day on their travels.
Larissa leaps off the page, a born survivor with a terrific store of anecdotes: the cousin who was eaten by a bear, or the Matisse painting she stole from the Italian government and 'repatriated' to Russia. By contrast, Francis remains an enigma.
Nevertheless, drawing on their diaries, and on conversations with Larissa who died recently aged 93, this is a warmly sympathetic book. On finishing, you'll feel a glow that, against all the odds, this unlikely couple got their happy ever after.