From one of our most acclaimed historians, a major new biography of one of history’s most disturbing, dubious masterminds, showing how a Siberian peasant, through his seduction of the imperial household, contributed to the collapse of the greatest autocracy in the world
When Russia's Dowager Empress was pregnant with the future Tsar, she dreamed that a peasant would one day kill her son. The idea terrified her, and for the rest of her days she 'lived under the pressure of the prophecy'. Did the prophecy come true with the arrival at court of a mysterious, barely literate moujhik from Siberia, Grigori Rasputin?
In this extraordinary portrait of an enigmatic character, Antony Beevor brings readers closer than ever before to Rasputin’s scandalous life and death. Though he had no official position at court, Rasputin’s hold over the Romanovs became the stuff of legend. Exaggerated accounts of political and financial corruption swirled around him, to say nothing of the stories of his debauchery with the Empress and even her daughters. The consequences of the rumor and conspiracy theories were devastating—when the February revolution broke out in 1917, hardly a sword was raised in the Tsar’s defense.
Through extensive use of previously unpublished reports, interviews, and interrogations, Beevor shows the truth of Rasputin’s rampant lust and opportunism, victimization of poor and vulnerable women, and deep hypocrisy and corruption. Part political thriller, part gothic mystery, Rasputin and the Dowager Empress’s Dream is a fascinating story of human perversity.
Antony Beevor was educated at Winchester and Sandhurst. A regular officer in the 11th Hussars, he served in Germany and England. He has published several novels, and his works of nonfiction include The Spanish Civil War; Crete: The Battle and the Resistance, which won the 1993 Runciman Award; Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942—1943; and Berlin: The Downfall, 1945. With his wife, Artemis Cooper, he wrote Paris: After the Liberation: 1944—1949. His book Stalingrad was awarded the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, the Wolfson History Prize, and the Hawthornden Prize in 1999.
View titles by Antony Beevor
From one of our most acclaimed historians, a major new biography of one of history’s most disturbing, dubious masterminds, showing how a Siberian peasant, through his seduction of the imperial household, contributed to the collapse of the greatest autocracy in the world
When Russia's Dowager Empress was pregnant with the future Tsar, she dreamed that a peasant would one day kill her son. The idea terrified her, and for the rest of her days she 'lived under the pressure of the prophecy'. Did the prophecy come true with the arrival at court of a mysterious, barely literate moujhik from Siberia, Grigori Rasputin?
In this extraordinary portrait of an enigmatic character, Antony Beevor brings readers closer than ever before to Rasputin’s scandalous life and death. Though he had no official position at court, Rasputin’s hold over the Romanovs became the stuff of legend. Exaggerated accounts of political and financial corruption swirled around him, to say nothing of the stories of his debauchery with the Empress and even her daughters. The consequences of the rumor and conspiracy theories were devastating—when the February revolution broke out in 1917, hardly a sword was raised in the Tsar’s defense.
Through extensive use of previously unpublished reports, interviews, and interrogations, Beevor shows the truth of Rasputin’s rampant lust and opportunism, victimization of poor and vulnerable women, and deep hypocrisy and corruption. Part political thriller, part gothic mystery, Rasputin and the Dowager Empress’s Dream is a fascinating story of human perversity.
Antony Beevor was educated at Winchester and Sandhurst. A regular officer in the 11th Hussars, he served in Germany and England. He has published several novels, and his works of nonfiction include The Spanish Civil War; Crete: The Battle and the Resistance, which won the 1993 Runciman Award; Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942—1943; and Berlin: The Downfall, 1945. With his wife, Artemis Cooper, he wrote Paris: After the Liberation: 1944—1949. His book Stalingrad was awarded the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, the Wolfson History Prize, and the Hawthornden Prize in 1999.
View titles by Antony Beevor
