Simon Sebag Montefiore
The Romanovs were the most successful dynasty of modern times, ruling a sixth of the world’s surface. How did one family turn a war-ruined principality into the world’s greatest empire? And how did they lose it all?
This is the intimate story of twenty tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition. Montefiore’s gripping chronicle reveals their secret world of unlimited power and ruthless empire-building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence and wild extravagance, and peopled by a cast of adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries and poets, from Ivan the Terrible to Tolstoy, from Queen Victoria to Lenin.
In conversation with historian and broadcaster, Professor Kate Williams, Simon Sebag Montefiore draws on new archival research to tell a story of triumph and tragedy, love and death, a universal study of power and how the scene was set for Russia to become the country we know today.
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Simon Sebag Montefiore is a prizewinning historian and novelist whose bestselling books have been published in over forty-eight languages and won numerous awards. He is the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels, and has also written and presented five BBC TV series on Jerusalem, Rome, Istanbul, Spain and Vienna.
Image © Marcus-Leoni
Kate Williams
Kate Williams is Professor of History at Reading University and appears often on TV and radio. She and Simon Sebag Montefiore were recently a BBC Four Quizeum team at the Jewish Museum London. Kate Williams’ new novel, The Edge of the Fall, a sequel to The Storms of War, continues the story of the de Witt family as they struggle with the aftermath of the Great War and enter the roaring 1920s. Her most recent historical book is a biography of Empress Josephine.
