872 days that cost of almost a million lives make the siege of Leningrad one of the longest and deadliest in modern history. Clem Cecil talks with Pushkin House Book Prize 2018 winning author, Alexis Peri, about her book ‘The War Within: Diaries From the Siege of Leningrad’. Alexis shares the tragic story of how citizens struggled to make sense of a world collapsing around them. We explore how residents recorded in intimate detail the toll taken on minds and bodies by starvation, bombardment, and disease. For many, diary writing became instrumental to survival.