Together, they presided over the last years of dynastic Europe and the outbreak of the most destructive war the world had ever seen, a war that set twentieth-century Europe on course to be the most violent continent in the history of the world.Miranda Carter uses the cousins' correspondence and a host of historical sources to tell the tragicomic story of a tiny, glittering, solipsistic world that was often preposterously out of kilter with its times, struggling to stay in command of politics and world events as history overtook it. George, Nicholas and Wilhelm is a brilliant and sometimes darkly hilarious portrait of these men--damaged, egotistical Wilhelm; quiet, stubborn Nicholas; and anxious, dutiful George--and their lives, foibles and obsessions, from tantrums to uniforms to stamp collecting. It is also alive with fresh, subtle portraits of other familiar figures: Queen Victoria--grandmother to two of them, grandmother-in-law to the third--whose conservatism and bullying obsession with family left a dangerous legacy; and Edward VII, the playboy "arch-vulgarian" who turned out to have a remarkable gift for international relations and the theatrics of mass politics. At the same time, Carter weaves through their stories a riveting account of the events that led to World War I, showing how the personal and the political interacted, sometimes to devastating effect.For all three men the war would be a disaster that destroyed forever the illusion of their close family relationships, with any sense of peace and harmony shattered in a final coda of murder, betrayal and abdication.

    They included the Tsar’s mother, the Dowager Empress Marie, and his sister, the Grand Duchess Xenia, Prince Felix Youssupov, the murderer of Rasputin and a man once mooted as a future leader of Russia, and Grand Duke Nicholas, former Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armies.As the ship prepared to set sail, a British sloop carrying 170 White Russian soldiers drew up alongside. The soldiers stood on deck and sang the Russian National Anthem. It was the last time the anthem was sung to members of the Imperial Family within Russian territory for over 70 years. The Dowager Empress stood on deck alone. Nobody dared to approach her.The Russian Court at Sea vividly recreates this unlikely voyage, with its bizarre assortment of warring characters and its priceless cargo of treasures, including rolled-up Rembrandts and Faberge eggs. It is a story, by turns exotic, comic and doomed, of an extraordinary group of people caught up in an extraordinary moment in history when their lives were in every way at sea.

    Pius and idealistic, the young Sophie shed her cloak of innocence to become Catherine The Great. At the urging of her ambitious mother, Johanna, Sophie married Peter III, the only grandson of Russian legend, Peter I. After scandalous love affairs and the mysterious sudden death of her husband, Peter III, Catherine ascended the Russian throne. The most intriguing aspect of the story is the fact that Catherine had no moral or legal right to the Russian throne. During that era, the laws of succession were rigidly enforced. In Russia, there were three living heirs, each with a legitimate right to the throne; one of those heirs was her husband, Peter III, the grandson of Peter I, a giant in Russian history, known affectionately as The Father of Russia. Catherine was cautioned repeatedly that she would not be able to sidestep her husband, Peter III and Ivan VI (who was living but in prison), while at the same time ignoring the rights of her own son, Paul I. Highly placed members of the Russian aristocracy warned Catherine that the Russian people would take up arms against her solely for the fact that she was German, not Russian. The fact that Catherine was able to overcome so many obstacles to ascend the throne of Russia is a monument to her brilliance, strength and determination. Not only was she crowned Empress, her rule would last thirty years. Catherine's extraordinary success as a ruler has made her a legend in her own right.

    Shirer's new book - written in his ninth decade - explores the passionate, highly charged, and extraordinary lives of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy. It is a compelling illumination both of the nature of genius and of the universal problems of love, sex, and marriage - themes that Tolstoy played out in his great fiction and that haunted him in his tangled domestic life. Rich in anecdotes, wise, full of sweeping history, and imbued with Shirer's profound knowledge of literature and life, Love and Hatred ranks beside such works as Robert Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra and Nigel Nicolson's Portrait of a Marriage as a masterly, intuitive, and sympathetic exploration of the love/hate relationship between two famous, bigger-than-life people. Beginning in 1862, when Tolstoy committed the blunder of asking his young bride to read his diaries of his bachelor life so there should be no secrets between them, and ending with his tragic flight from home (and marriage) in 1910 while the whole world waited for news of him, Love and Hatred tells the story of a great romance between two people who could live neither together nor apart - a romance that exhausted and obsessed them both, and that forms the basis for much of Tolstoy's work. The final book of William L. Shirer's long and brilliant career, it is - appropriately - a masterly re-creation of a time, of two extraordinary people, and of the very nature of love, marriage, and old age.

    A picture is also given of political conditions in Russia during the reign of the last Romanovs. The story is illustrated with the magnificent coronation costumes and regalia designed by Faberge, personal objects relating to the family lives of Nicholas and Alexandra, and icons and religious objects demonstrating the role of Church and State during this period.

    As a young man, voraciously addicted to drugs and sex, with men as much as women, marriage and parenthood for the impetuously wayward playboy prince, with his night-clubbing lifestyle and intimate liaisons, was seen as the only stabilizing influence. Enter the stylish and sophisticated Princess Marina, the cultured, artistic and multilingual youngest daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece and his Russian-born wife, Grand Duchess Yelena Vladimirovna. As Duke and Duchess of Kent, George and Marina were the Crown’s most glittering representatives, not least in the aftermath of the Abdication of George’s adored elder brother, the briefly-reigned King Edward VIII; the man with whom he had not only shared both home and high-flying lifestyles, but who had helped cure him of his addiction to morphine and cocaine.On and off duty, the Duke and Duchess lived life to the full, and after George’s untimely death, Marina continued to do so during the twenty-six years of her widowhood. Revisiting his 1988 best-selling biography, George and Marina: Duke and Duchess of Kent, Christopher Warwick, in this revised and partly re-written study, tells their story anew.

    On one hand, they are venerated as saints, innocent victims of Bolshevik assassins, and on the other they are impugned as the unwitting harbingers of revolution and imperial collapse, blamed for all the ills that befell the Russian people in the 20th century. Theirs was also a tragic love story; for whatever else can be said of them, there can be no doubt that Alix and Nicky adored one another. Soon after their engagement, Alix wrote in her fiancé’s diary: “Ever true and ever loving, faithful, pure and strong as death”—words which met their fulfillment twenty-four years later in a blood-spattered cellar in Ekaterinburg. Through the letters and diaries written by the couple and by those around them, Virginia Rounding presents an intimate, penetrating, and fresh portrayal of these two complex figures and of their passion—their love and their suffering. She explores the nature and possible causes of the Empress’s ill health, and examines in depth the enigmatic triangular relationship between Nicky, Alix and their ‘favourite,’ Ania Vyrubova, protégée of the infamous Rasputin, extracting the meaning from words left unsaid, from hints and innuendoes.. The story of Alix and Nicky, of their four daughters known collectively as ‘OTMA’ and of their hemophiliac little boy Alexei, is endlessly fascinating, and Rounding makes these characters come alive, presenting them in all their human dimensions and expertly leading the reader into their vanished world.

    s/t: A Family Album of Royalty at Home & Abroad 1860-1914

     Sandro was a crucial witness to the collapse of his family. He was the cousin, brother-in-law and close friend of the last tsar, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. He was with Nicky when thousands of Russian peasants died at Khodynka Field during Nicky’s coronation; he was with Nicky in the lead-up to the disastrous Russo-Japanese War; he was with Nicky during the failed revolution of 1905-6; he was with Nicky when the Russian Duma was established in an attempt to ward off future revolutions; he was with Nicky as Russia moved determinedly toward a military showdown with Germany; he was with Nicky fighting the German army of the Eastern Front during the First World War; he was with Nicky when he abdicated in favour of his brother, Michael, who refused the throne. This is a riveting first-hand account of the final days of the Russian Empire and of what it was like to be a member of the Russian Imperial Family at that time. And to our great good fortune, while Sandro may have been no Stolypin, he was a keen observer and an excellent writer. Anyone intrigued by the last days of the Romanovs as the ruling family of Russia should read this book.

    

    Wracked by boundary disputes, political intrigue, myriad wars and shifting centers of power, Russia was maintained throughout by a ruling elite as diverse as the lands they governed. The story of these rulers, told wit clarity and style in Czars, is in many ways the story of Russia itself.From the birth of the Kievan state in the second half of the ninth century under the Varangian Oleg to the murder of Czar Nicholas II and his family in 1918, authors Duffy and Ricci trace the long and twisted line of czarist rule in Russia, offering many insights on the uses and abuses of absolute power, as well as a glimpse at world history through the eyes of those who made it.Key players includes: Saint Olga, appointed regent in 945, and the first of several strong czarinas Ivan I, prince of Moscovy 1328-1341, who centralized power in Moscow Boris Godunov, Fedor II, Dmitri the Impostor, Basil IV, Dmitri and Ladislaus of Poland, the six czars who ruled, sometimes simultaneously, during the aptly named Time of Troubles, 1598-1612 Peter the Great, perhaps Russia's most progressive ruler Catherine the Great, who led a successful revolt against her husband, Czar Peter III, to become the fourth woman monarch of Russia Seventeen portraits of czars through the ages, several historical maps, genealogical charts, a thorough bibliography and a detailed index bring the reader as close to Russia's erstwhile monarchy as one would want to get. Ideal for students, historians and general readers from serf to sovereign, Czars is a vital new page in the literature of Russian history.

    Narrated by the mother of Russia's last tsar, this novel brings to life the courageous story of Maria Feodorovna, one of Imperial Russia's most compelling women, who witnessed the splendor and tragic downfall of the Romanovs as she fought to save her dynasty in its final years.

    She fostered the culture of the Enlightenment and greatly expanded the immense empire created by Czar Ivan the Terrible, shifting the balance of power in Europe eastward. Famous for her will to power and for her dozen lovers, Catherine was also a prolific and gifted writer.Fluent in French, Russian, and German, Catherine published political theory, journalism, comedies, operas, and history, while writing thousands of letters as she corresponded with Voltaire and other public figures. The Memoirs of Catherine the Great provides an unparalleled window into eighteenth-century Russia and the mind of an absolute ruler.With insight, humor, and candor, Catherine presents her eyewitness account of history, from her whirlwind entry into the Russian court in 1744 at age fourteen as the intended bride of Empress Elizabeth I's nephew, the eccentric drunkard and future Peter III, to her unhappy marriage; from her two children, several miscarriages, and her and Peter's numerous affairs to the political maneuvering that enabled Catherine to seize the throne from him in 1762. Catherine's eye for telling details makes for compelling reading as she describes the dramatic fall and rise of her political fortunes.This definitive new translation from the French is scrupulously faithful to her words and is the first for which translators have consulted original manuscripts written in Catherine's own hand. It is an indispensable work for anyone interested in Catherine the Great, Russian history, or the eighteenth century.

    Her husband, however, possesses no such grace, and he rules Moscow as he does his wife, with a cold, hard fist.For Pavel and his bride, though, living in Sankt Peterburg means sharing a crowded cellar with other families, and being barely able to afford bread. Nevertheless, they are full of optimism, for their grandparents were serfs and this young couple is the first to leave the countryside to seek a better existence.However, after an explosive confrontation between peaceful demonstrators and tsarist soldiers, the lives of Ella and Pavel take two very different turns, but the fire of revolutionary Russia eventually links their fates forever.Robert Alexander once again masterfully combines the power of true history and riveting storytelling to bring this fascinating and legendary period to life.

    Skilfully interwoven with each other, Theo Aronson's accounts of these reigns, abdications and exiles capture the scope and variety of what Victoria used to call the Royal Mob.' Elizabeth Longford Ever since the instant success of his first book The Golden Bees: The Story of the Bonapartes, Theo Aronson has steadily built up his reputation as an historical biographer specializing in the Royal Houses of Europe. Among his many widely read books are Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story, Crowns in Conflict: The Triumph and the Tragedy of European Monarchy 1910-1918 and The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses. His books have been published in Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Holland and Belgium; in paperback, in book club editions and in serialization. THE KING IN LOVE: King Edward VII's Mistresses 'I found it totally absorbing... a thoroughly enjoyable book from start to finish.' Auberon Waugh, The Independent 'Mr Aronson is scrupulously fair . . . his book is entertaining and lively.' Brian Masters, The Standard NAPOLEON AND JOSEPHINE: A Love Story 'He tells their story superbly well . . . Aronson has a wonderful eye for significant detail as well as a shrewd appreciation of character. Above all his book is wonderfully readable.' Patrick Taylor-Martin, Sunday Times 'Mr Aronson, an exceptional authority on the world's crowned or once crowned heads, makes Josephine irresistible . . . absorbing and scholarly.' Alastair Forbes, Sunday Telegraph