The Book of the month:
'Simon Sebag Montefiore's The Romanovs is epic history on the grandest scale ... A story of conspiracy, drunken coups, assassination, torture, impaling, breaking on the wheel, lethal floggings with the knout, sexual and alcoholic excess, charlatans and pretenders, flamboyant wealth based on a grinding serfdom, and, not surprisingly, a vicious cycle of repression and revolt. Game of Thrones seems like the proverbial vicar's tea party in comparison ... Reading Montefiore's excellent account, it is hard to imagine how the monarchy could ever have survived under their catastrophic leadership' (Antony Beevor FINANCIAL TIMES)
Montefiore has an eye for the telling detail which lifts an unfamiliar narrative. His mammoth history of Russia's royal dynasty features many such vivid, amusing and surprising particulars. Indeed it is startlingly lubricious and gory ... Gore and sex aside, the author's pen produces reams of fluent, sometimes sparkling prose. Many of his reflections on the Romanov era apply well to Vladimir Putin's domains now ... The Russian court was an entrepot of power: its role as a broker allowed participants to amass wealth and bonded them in shared loyalty. But it also allowed them to compete without resorting to civil war or revolution. That sounds pretty much like the modern Kremlin (THE ECONOMIST)
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