Dasvidania, tovarisch

I have a trump card whenever people start rolling out stories of famous writer spotting: I once saw Alexander Solzhenitsyn playing tennis.

It was the end of the 1980s. Bush Senior was still in the White House, we could fill up our cars for about $1 a gallon. Even though perestroika was breaking out all over Eastern Europe, Solzhenitsyn was still living in exile in a tiny town in the US state of Vermont.

I was at university at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst at the time. One October day, a few of us took the hour or so drive up north to visit a friend in Vermont. Also, frankly, to stock up on beer; Massachusetts had a drinking age of 21, in Vermont it was 18. After meeting the friend, he casually said, ‘Hey want to see Alexander Solzhenitsyn play tennis?’

A question I never thought I would be asked. But apparently the Nobel laureate was a keen player and was regularly seen at the town’s public courts. We duly went to the town centre and sure enough, there was the great man – bearded like a prophet, patrolling the baseline. He couldn’t move too nimbly, but his form was impeccable. Say what you will about the Soviet system, it instilled athletic discipline.

His death has meant that I might go back and try to reappraise his work. We were force fed his books in the high school – because the Commies were, you know, evil. Maybe they aren’t the turgid pieces of anti-Soviet propaganda that I remember them as.