The greatest Russian poetess of the twentieth century Her fortitude and independence, the breadth of her compassion and the clarity of her realistic vision erased the line between herself and others; her intensely personal lyrics became the void of her nation's tragedy New York Times Book Review Tragedy did not wither her: it crowned her with majesty...Her life, in Keats's phrase, became 'a continual allegory', its strands interwoven with the story of a people. Indeed, her poems can be read in sequence as a 20th-century Russian chronicle Her Poem Without a Hero is perhaps one of the greatest poems of the 20th century Guardian A timeless poet of Stalin's reign who more than anyone captured its seething fear and hopelessness The Times A genius of Russian poetry Sunday Times Beautiful, clever... she came to represent the aspirations of so many, putting real flesh on Shelley's aphorism about poets, not tyrants, being the unacknowledged legislators of the world Sunday Telegraph Her poems always lift me up. She elevates emotions, makes them almost sacred...I always find her a real solace and an incredible inspiration The extraordinary misery of her life and the extraordinary merits of her poems make Anna Akhmatova one of the great literary figures of modern times Economist Once, when young, she had written the lines which lovers quoted to one another. Later she provided words which thousands of men and women repeated under their breath, as they suffered, feared and waited. Observer Not an easy person, but a grand one, and a great poet, described by one of her friends as "trailing behind her an invisible mantle of fame, sorrow, great losses, hurts" Sunday Times