A descendant of Chekhov's extended family, Darya Protopopova has always loved all things literary. When she found out that Chekhov was popular with British modernist writers, she decided to do a master's and then a doctorate in English modernism at the University of Oxford. Having completed both, she chose to spread her love for English literary giants among the masses and trained as a teacher of English at University College London. A year and a half into her first job, she was forced to leave after her school management told her she could no longer teach her GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) class, as some parents had complained about her foreignness. Shocked and disappointed, she briefly contemplated going back to Russia and becoming a xenophobe herself. However, the good had triumphed over the evil in her heart, and she is now happily teaching in a multilingual school in central London.