A superbly crafted and humane portrait of the final days of the last Romanovs – Nicholas II of Russia and his wife Alexandra.

Complementing his Pulitzer prize-winning Peter the Great, in this commanding book Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of imperial Russia to tell the story of the decline and fall of the ruling Romanov family: Tsar Nicholas II's political naivete; his wife Alexandra's obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin; and their son Alexis's battle with haemophilia.

Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a family tragedy played out on the brutal stage of early twentieth-century Russian history – the tale of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble.

A moving, rich and densely documented account of the last Romanovs * Newsweek *
Wonderfully rich tapestry... They come vividly alive before our eyes' * New York Times *
A magnificent and intimate picture... The main characters [and] a whole era become alive and comprehensible' * Harpers *

Robert K. Massie was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and studied American history at Yale and European history at Oxford, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He was president of the Authors Guild from 1987 to 1991. His books include Peter the Great: His Life and World (for which he won a Pulitzer Prize for biography); The Romanovs: The Final Chapter; Dreadnought; Castles of Steel; and Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman.