I don’t know what I was expecting from the house of the former girlfriend of a billionaire Russian oligarch. Perhaps something a little more … beige? A touch more panic-room chic, maybe? Some mortician-grade marble and a few lifeless Hirsts, at least?
As it happens, however, the home of Alexandra Tolstoy, on a pleasant tree-lined street in a red-brick suburb of London, is almost entirely normal. And normal, to Tolstoy, might be the greatest compliment of all.
