When Joseph Stalin married Nadya Alliluyeva in 1918, he already knew her parents well - they had been in the underground revolutionary movement together before the Bolshevik uprising. There was then very little to indicate the fate that the son-in-law would inflict on this idealistic family. Published to mark the 40th anniversary of Stalin's death, this is the story of four generations of Alliluyevs from 1860 to the present, mainly in their own words, and an exploration of how far the sins of the fathers reach down through the generations. The author's other books include Swanbrooke Down, Talking About Bereavement and Discovering Hedgerows.