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Shortlisted for the HWA Sharpe Books Non-Fiction Crown Award A work of investigative history that will completely change the way in which we see the Romanov story. Finally, here is the truth about the secret plans to rescue Russia’s last imperial family. On 17 July 1918, the whole of the Russian Imperial Family was murdered. There were no miraculous escapes. The former Tsar Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and their children – Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexey – were all tragically gunned down in a blaze of bullets. Historian Helen Rappaport sets out to uncover why the Romanovs’ European royal relatives and the Allied governments failed to save them. It was not, ever, a simple ...
A TLS and Prospect Book of the Year From the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanov Sisters comes the story of the Russian aristocrats, artists, and intellectuals who sought freedom and refuge in the City of Light. Paris has always been a city of cultural excellence, fine wine and food, and the latest fashions. But it has also been a place of refuge for those fleeing persecution — never more so than before and after the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Romanov dynasty. For years, Russian aristocrats had enjoyed all that Belle Epoque Paris had to offer, spending lavishly when they visited. It was a place of artistic experimentation, such as Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. But ...
To Queen Victoria she was Aunt Julie; to Catherine the Great she was Grand Duchess Anna Feodorovna, granddaughter-in-law. This is the story of Princess Juliane-Henriette-Ulrike of Saxe-Coburg, the Rebel Romanov. Born in 1781 in a small impoverished duchy of Germany, Julie's quiet life took a fairy-tale turn when she married into the Russian Imperial Family - the Romanovs. But this world of baroque splendour, of opulent palaces and grandeur, was no happily ever after. Taken to Russia at just fourteen, her marriage was hastily brokered to save the Saxe-Coburg duchy from financial ruin. Her husband, Grand Duke Konstantin, was cruel and abusive, Julie was uprooted from her home, family, language...
SELECTED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TELEGRAPH AND EVENING STANDARD '[The] centenary will prompt a raft of books on the Russian Revolution. They will be hard pushed to better this highly original, exhaustively researched and superbly constructed account.' Saul David, Daily Telegraph 'A gripping, vivid, deeply researched chronicle of the Russian Revolution told through the eyes of a surprising, flamboyant cast of foreigners in Petrograd, superbly narrated by Helen Rappaport.' Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The Romanovs Between the first revolution in February 1917 and Lenin’s Bolshevik coup in October, Petrograd (the former St Petersburg) was in turmoil. Foreign visitors who filled hote...
History.
Conspirator is the compelling story of Lenin's exile: the years in which he and his political collaborators plotted a revolution that would change 20th century history. It tells the story of Lenin in the long and difficult years leading up to the Russian Revolution, years that were spent constantly on the move in and around Europe in the company of his loyal and longsuffering wife Nadezhda Krupskaya. Conspirator strips away the arid politics of Lenin's official life and reveals the real man, as well as describing his many conflicts, personal and political, with those who shared his exile. It also looks at the loyal circle of women who unquestioningly supported Lenin, at Russian émigré lives in the enclaves of the cities in they lived and the risks taken in support of Lenin's vision by the wider network of Russian revolutionaries in the underground movement, both at home and abroad.
'Rappaport uses new sources to give a vivid account of Albert's death . . . a valuable and insightful book which will change our view of Queen Victoria.' Spectator When Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, died in December 1861 the nation was paralysed with grief. His death was a catastrophe for Victoria, who not only adored her husband but had, through twenty-one years of marriage, utterly relied on him: as companion, father of their children, friend, confidant, and unofficial private secretary. Without Albert to guide and support her, the Queen retreated into a state of pathological grief which nobody could penetrate and few understood. Drawing widely on contemporary letters, diaries and memoirs, Rappaport brings new light to bear on the causes of Albert's death and tracks Victoria's mission to commemorate her husband in perpetuity. Richly compelling, this is the story of a magnificent obsession that even death could not sever.
Award-winning and critically acclaimed historian Helen Rappaport turns to the tragic story of the daughters of the last Tsar of all the Russias, slaughtered with their parents at Ekaterinburg.
Madame Rachel had everything: a Mayfair address, the title of 'purveyor to Her Majesty the Queen', a shop full of exotic, expensive creams and potions. Her clientele were aristocratic, rich - and gullible. This is the true story of a woman who began life as a poor fish fryer in a disease-ridden, grubby corner of Victorian London. She ended up with a shop in New Bond Street, where her wealthy clients came in their droves, lured by the promise of eternal beauty. What they found there was a con-woman and fraudster who made a career out of lies, treachery and the desperate hopes of women wanting to be 'beautiful for ever'. Beautiful For Ever also tells of the beginnings of the cosmetics industry...
Capturing the Light starts with a tiny scrap of purple-tinged paper, 176 years old and about the size of a postage stamp. On it you can just make out a tiny, ghostly image of a gothic window, an image so small and perfect that it ‘might be supposed to be the work of some Lilliputian artist’: the world’s first photographic negative. This captivating book traces the lives of two very different men in the 1830s, both racing to be the first to solve one of the world’s oldest problems: how to capture an image and keep it for ever. On the one hand there is Henry Fox Talbot: a quiet, solitary gentleman-amateur tinkering away on his farm in the English countryside. On the other Louis Daguerre, a flamboyant, charismatic French showman in search of fame and fortune. Only one question remains: who will get there first?