Sunday Feature: Seven and a Half Years

For the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, Susannah Clapp explores his obsession with memory and the passage of time, and his fear of being forgotten. Shortly before he died, Chekhov confided in a friend that he believed he would be remembered for seven, perhaps seven and a half years. Susannah gathers a special Chekhov repertory company, including Anna Maxwell Martin, at the BBC's Maida Vale studios to discuss and perform new translations, by young poet Sasha Dugdale, of Chekhov's Three Sisters. She also hears from Chekhov experts in Britain and Moscow, including translator Michael Frayn, director Declan Donnellan and Anatoly Smelianski, Director of the Moscow Art Theatre School, to tell a story of broken clocks, spinning tops, tuberculosis and immortality