Bridget Jones scriptwriter to pen TV adaptation of War and Peace

The BBC will be turning Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel, War and Peace, into a six-part television drama. The award-winning scriptwriter Andrew Davies, best-known for television adaptations of books such as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility as well as big screen films such as Bridget Jones, will rework the literary masterpiece in time for 2015.

Davies said: “Not just a great novel, it’s a wonderful read and it’ll make a wonderful serial … The characters are so natural and human and easy to identify with and Natasha Rostova just beats Lizzy Bennet as the most loveable heroine in literature.”

The BBC’s last adaptation of the novel was in 1972. The 20-part dramatisation starred Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins. The first English-language film adaptation starred Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda and Anita Ekberg in 1956. The book, which was first published in 1869, follows the lives of aristocratic families affected by the French invasion of Russia in the early 19th century.