A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.

Boris Pasternak, creator of the immortal Dr Zhivago, discredited by Stalin and denied the Nobel Literature Prize by Khrushev, Pasternak's Dr Zhivago was banned in the USSR until 1988. Only now in the new spirit of freedom and reconciliation that exists the story of Pasternak can be told. The words of Pasternak are spoken by Robert Powell, with Imogen Stubbs as Lara and Olga.