1. Nikolai Tolstoy is a former parliamentary candidate of the UK Independence Party and is the current nominal head of the House of Tolstoy, an aristocratic Russian family.
23 Facts About Nikolai Tolstoy
1. 2.
The son of Count Dimitri Nikolai Tolstoy and Mary Wicksteed, he is a member of the noble Nikolai Tolstoy family.
3.
Nikolai Tolstoy grew up as the stepson of author Patrick O'Brian, whom his mother married after his parents divorced.
4.
Nikolai Tolstoy was educated at Wellington College, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and Trinity College Dublin.
5.
Nikolai Tolstoy has written a number of books about Celtic mythology.
6.
Nikolai Tolstoy was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1979.
7.
Nikolai Tolstoy has written about World War II and its immediate aftermath.
8.
Nikolai Tolstoy has written of the forced repatriation of Soviet citizens and others during and after World War II.
9.
Nikolai Tolstoy condemned the use of especially bussed-in audiences, who were repeatedly permitted by Judge Levin, the judge of the trial, to boo and hiss at appropriate moments.
10.
Nikolai Tolstoy called Levin's conduct "an appalling travesty of every principle of equity", and said that it was "a show trial in every sense of the word", even being conducted in a theatre.
11.
Nikolai Tolstoy delayed payment by appealing to fifteen courts in Britain and Europe, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the size of the penalty violated his right to freedom of expression.
12.
Nikolai Tolstoy sought to appeal on the basis of new evidence which he claimed proved Aldington had perjured himself over the date of his departure from Austria in May 1945.
13.
Nikolai Tolstoy refused to pay any libel damages while Lord Aldington was alive.
14.
In 1978, Nikolai Tolstoy was Guest-of-Honour at the Eldon League, and appeared to respond to the Russian Tsarist toast "Autocracy, Orthodoxy and Nationalism".
15.
Nikolai Tolstoy was Chairman of the London-based Russian Monarchist League, and chaired their annual dinner on 6 March 1986, when the Guest-of-Honour was the MP John Biggs-Davison.
16.
Nikolai Tolstoy was in the chair for their Summer Dinner on 4 June 1987, at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall.
17.
Nikolai Tolstoy was a founding committee member of the now established War and Peace Ball, held annually in London, which raises funds for White Russian charities.
18.
Nikolai Tolstoy has stood unsuccessfully for the Eurosceptic and populist United Kingdom Independence Party as a parliamentary candidate in four British general elections, having first been asked by UKIP founder Alan Sked in November 1996.
19.
In 2024, Nikolai Tolstoy accepted Patronage of the Peel Club, a private member's group in Pall Mall, London.
20.
Nikolai Tolstoy is a distant cousin to the author Leo Tolstoy as Leo Tolstoy was descended from Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy, the younger brother of Ivan.
21.
Nikolai Tolstoy's father, Count Dimitri Nikolai Tolstoy, escaped from Russia in 1920 and settled in the United Kingdom, granted British nationality in September 1946.
22.
Nikolai Tolstoy entered the legal profession, was called to the bar, and later appointed a Queen's Counsel.
23.
Nikolai Tolstoy has contributed chapters to the new History of the Twentieth Century published in Moscow, which is a prescribed text for all Russian high schools.