PARALLEL LIVES

An international romance.

Novelist and art historian Pears recounts the unlikely love story of Larissa Salmina (1931-2024), a Russian art curator, and British art historian Francis Haskell (1928-2000), who were Pears’ neighbors in Oxford. Drawing on conversations with Salmina and on Haskell’s 60 volumes of diaries, Pears conveys in rich detail the worlds from which the two emerged: Larissa’s in the repressive Soviet Union, Francis’ in class-conscious England. Their personalities were vastly different: Larissa was a rule-breaker, freewheeling and irreverent; Francis was self-doubting, lonely, and, from long years in one school and another, meticulous in following rules. Larissa feared for her Jewish friends as antisemitism raged; Francis hid his Jewish ancestry. Both were drawn to the arts. Larissa trained in art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, doing so well that she continued directly to a three-year postgraduate course at the Hermitage. In 1962, she was assigned to bring Soviet art to the Venice Biennale—works she lost when the freight car carrying them was decoupled from the rest of the train. Francis was in Venice at the time, studying art history on his own. Through a friend, they met and were instantly smitten. Although Larissa was married, she dived enthusiastically into an affair with Francis, breaking the terms of her visa to travel with him. For his part, he was amazed that anyone would fall in love with him and reveled in the newfound intimacy. Intricate machinations were involved to allow them to marry at Leningrad’s Palace of Marriages in 1965. Though Larissa, who never aspired to emigrate, was initially unhappy when they settled in England, her resilience and adaptability, and the couple’s shared spirit of adventure, sustained a long, loving marriage.

Warm portraits of two singular individuals.