Simon Sebag Montefiore Books In Order

Sashenka

Winter 1916: St. Petersburg, Russia, is on the brink of revolution. Outside the Smolny Institute for Noble Girls, an English governess is waiting for her young charge to be released from school. But so are the Tsar’s secret police…

Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is just sixteen. As her mother parties with Rasputin and their dissolute friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen night to play her part in a dangerous game of conspiracy and seduction.

Twenty years on, Sashenka is married to a powerful, rising Red leader with whom she has two children. Around her people are disappearing, while in the secret world of the elite her own family is safe. But she’s about to embark on a forbidden love affair that will have devastating consequences.

Sashenka‘s story lies hidden for half a century, until a young historian goes deep into Stalin’s private archives and uncovers a heartbreaking tale of betrayal and redemption, savage cruelty and unexpected heroism and one woman forced to make an unbearable choice.

My Affair with Stalin

‘Montefiore’s skill in transferring Stalin’s tactics and the revolutionary dynamic to a story of schoolboy rivalry ensures that what might have been a narrative corset becomes a metaphorical mirror. Schoolboy machinations mimic Soviet power struggles and both, in turn, wittily reflect the daily political manoeuvrings of many organisations. The camaraderie fostered by a cause, the corruption of power and the glamour of evil are all anatomised with a light touch and an honest eye…
Engaging and assured…
a thoroughly nourishing confection.’ The Times.

Catherine the Great and Potemkin

History’s greatest love story, Catherine the Great and Potemkin is a sweeping epic of sex, love, power, conquest and extravagance on a magnificent Russian scale. Not only was only was their romance wildly passionate but they were also probably the most successful political partnership of all, outstripping Antony and Cleopatra or Napoleon and Josephine. Their secret letters, which discuss other lovers, sex, wars, politics, arts and health, are surely the most intimate and extraordinary ever written by an empress or politician. Both characters in this joint biography, based on new archives, are extraordinary: she a German princess married lovelessly at 14 to the Russian heir combined charm, passion and political genius. She ruthlessly seized power and ruled triumphantly for thirty years; he a brilliant flamboyant politician, strategist and conqueror of wild eccentricity and debauchery. Outrageously sexual and political, he was the love of her life. They shocked Europe by taking younger lovers yet they secretly married and ruled together as best friends, and lifelong lovers.

Stalin

Fifty years after his death, Stalin remains a figure of powerful and dark fascination. The almost unfathomable scale of his crimes as many as 20 million Soviets died in his purges and infamous Gulag has given him the lasting distinction as a personification of evil in the twentieth century. But though the facts of Stalin‘s reign are well known, this remarkable biography reveals a Stalin we have never seen before as it illuminates the vast foundation human, psychological and physical that supported and encouraged him, the men and women who did his bidding, lived in fear of him and, more often than not, were betrayed by him. In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research, brilliant synthesis and narrative lan, Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the life and lives of Stalin s court from the time of his acclamation as leader in 1929, five years after Lenin s death, until his own death in 1953 at the age of seventy three. Through the lens of personality Stalin s as well as those of his most notorious henchmen, Molotov, Beria and Yezhov among them the author sheds new light on the oligarchy that attempted to create a new world by exterminating the old. He gives us the details of their quotidian and monstrous lives: Stalin s favorites in music, movies, literature Hemmingway, The Forsyte Saga and The Last of the Mohicans were at the top of his list, food and history he took Ivan the Terrible as his role model and swore by Lenin s dictum, A revolution without firing squads is meaningless . We see him among his courtiers, his informal but deadly game of power played out at dinners and parties at Black Sea villas and in the apartments of the Kremlin. We see the debauchery, paranoia and cravenness that ruled the lives of Stalin s inner court, and we see how the dictator played them one against the other in order to hone the awful efficiency of his killing machine. With stunning attention to detail, Montefiore documents the crimes, small and large, of all the members of Stalin s court. And he traces the intricate and shifting web of their relationships as the relative warmth of Stalin s rule in the early 1930s gives way to the Great Terror of the late 1930s, the upheaval of World War II there has never been as acute an account of Stalin s meeting at Yalta with Churchill and Roosevelt and the horrific postwar years when he terrorized his closest associates as unrelentingly as he did the rest of his country. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar gives an unprecedented understanding of Stalin s dictatorship, and, as well, a Stalin as human and complicated as he is brutal. It is a galvanizing portrait: razor sharp, sensitive and unforgiving.

Potemkin

As a young guardsman, Grigory Potemkin caught the eye of Catherine the Great with a theatrical act of gallantry during the coup that placed her on the throne. Over the next thirty years he would become her lover, co ruler, and husband in a secret marriage that left room for both to satisfy their sexual appetites. Potemkin proved to be one of the most brilliant statesmen of the eighteenth century, helping Catherine expand the Russian empire and deftly manipulating allies and adversaries from Constantinople to London. This acclaimed biography vividly re creates Potemkin‘s outsized character and accomplishments and restores him to his rightful place as a colossus of the eighteenth century. It chronicles the tempestuous relationship between Potemkin and Catherine, a remarkable love affair between two strong personalities that helped shape the course of history. As he brings these characters to life, Montefiore also tells the story of the creation of the Russian empire. This is biography as it is meant to be: both intimate and panoramic, and bursting with life.

Speeches That Changed the World

This gripping audio pack provides genuine historical recordings of 20 of the most significant speeches of the 20th century and is accompanied by a deluxe illustrated book containing the transcripts of these and over 30 other momentous orations from throughout history. Complete with biographies of each speaker and the stories of why the world changed as a result, this is a fascinating history of humanity told through the speeches that shaped it. This pack includes the audio of: Neville Chamberlain ‘Peace for our time’; Winston Churchill ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’; Winston Churchill ‘This was their finest hour’; Winston Churchill ‘Never…
was so much owed by so many to so few’; Franklin D. Roosevelt ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’; Franklin D. Roosevelt ‘A date which will live in infamy’; General Douglas MacArthur ‘I have just left your fighting sons in Korea…
They are splendid in every way’; Jawaharlal Nehru ‘At the stroke of the midnight hour…
India will awake to life and freedom’; Nelson Mandela ‘I am the First Accused’; Nelson Mandela ‘Free at last’; John F. Kennedy ‘Ask not what our country can do for you’; John F. Kennedy ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’; Martin Luther King Jnr ‘I have a dream’; Martin Luther King Jnr. ‘I’ve seen the promised land’; and, Richard M. Nixon ‘There can be no whitewash at the White House’. The pack also includes audio of: Chaim Herzog ‘Hate, ignorance and evil’; Mother Teresa ‘Love begins at home’; Ronald Reagan ‘Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall’; F.W. de Klerk ‘The time for negotiation has arrived’; and, George W. Bush ‘A great people has been moved to defend a great nation’.

Young Stalin

A revelatory account that finally unveils the shadowy journey from obscurity to power of the Georgian cobbler’s son who became the Red Tsar the man who, along with Hitler, remains the modern personification of evil. What makes a Stalin? What formed this merciless psychopath who was, as well, a consummate politician, the dynamic world statesman who helped create and industrialize the USSR, outplayed Churchill and Roosevelt, organized Stalingrad, took Berlin and defeated Hitler?Young Stalin tells the story of a charismatic, darkly turbulent boy born into poverty, of doubtful parentage, scarred by his upbringing but possessed of unusual talents. Admired as a romantic poet and trained as a priest both by the time he was in his early twenties he found his true mission as a fanatical revolutionary. A mastermind of bank robbery, protection rackets, arson, piracy and murder, he was equal parts terrorist, intellectual and brigand. Here is the dramatic story of his friendships and hatreds, his many love affairs with women from every social stratum and age group his illegitimate children and his complicated relationship with the Tsarist secret police. Here is Stalin the arch conspirator and escape artist whose brutal ingenuity so impressed Lenin that Lenin made him, along with Trotsky, top henchman. Montefiore makes clear how the paranoid criminal underworld was Stalin s natural habitat, and how murderous Caucasian banditry and political gangsterism, combined with pitiless ideology, enabled Stalin to dominate the Kremlin and create the USSR in his flawed image. Based on ten years of research in newly opened archives in Russia and Georgia, Young Stalin companion to the prizewinning Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar is a brilliant prehistory of the USSR, a chronicle of the Revolution, and an intimate biography. A thrilling work of history, unparalleled in its scope, full of astonishing new evidence and utterly fascinating: this is how Stalin became Stalin.

101 World Heroes

In ‘101 World Heroes‘, bestselling historian Simon Sebag Montefiore presents his personal selection of the 100 most heroic figures from the pages of world history. Emperors and queens, soldiers and statesmen, religious leaders and philosophers rub shoulders with composers and poets, scientists and explorers, artists and storytellers from three millennia. All are united not just by what they did in their own lifetimes, but also by the enduring legacy they have bequeathed to the sum of human experience and achievement. The central spine of the book consists of a series of narrative entries recording the lives and legacies of the 101 heroes and hero*ines. Each entry is accompanied by a brief essay opening a window on the times in which he or she lived. Thus the life of Egypt’s greatest pharaoh, Ramses II, is accompanied by an essay looking at the gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt, while the entry for Admiral Horatio Nelson explores the tactics and gunnery of a ship of the line. The book is illustrated throughout with maps, diagrams, paintings and photographs, and an appendix celebrates a further 100 individual deeds of heroism with a special claim to immortality. The heroes include: Ramses the Great, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, King Solomon, Elizabeth I of England, Winston Churchill, The Buddha, Tokugawa Ieyasu, M. K. Gandhi, Aristotle, William Shakespeare, F.D. Roosevelt, Alexander the Great, Thomas Jefferson, David Ben Gurion, Hannibal, Voltaire, George Orwell, Jesus, Napoleon Bonaparte, Elvis Presley, Marcus Aurelius, Horatio Nelson, J. F. Kennedy, Mohammed, Duke of Wellington, John Paul II, Charlemagne, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Leo Tolstoy, and Charles Darwin.

Monsters

Some devised methods of torture cruel beyond belief, some killed members of their own families, others ordered the murders of millions of innocents; some were admired statesmen, some were maniacs others simply butchers. Vlad Dracul, prince of Wallachia, impaled his enemies on a forest of bloody stakes; the Byzantine empress Irene had her son’s eyes gouged out; the Crusaders massacred 70,000 innocent Muslims and Jews when they took Jerusalem; and, the Mongol warlord Tamerlane built pyramids of human skulls. In the 20th century, Adolf Hitler slaughtered 6 million Jews, Josef Stalin liquidated 25 million Russians, while Mao Zedong was responsible for the deaths of 70 million Chinese. In ‘101 World Heroes’ Simon Sebag Montefiore selected his ultimate heroes and hero*ines; here he reveals history’s dark side.’Monsters‘ presents, in chronological order, compellingly readable portraits of 101 sinister individuals who shared a relish for the brutal exercise of pitiless, unbounded power, a delight in imposing pain and suffering, and a contempt for human life. Many of them Nero and Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Henry VIII, Lucrezia Borgia and Jack the Ripper, Lenin and Himmler, Charles Manson and Pablo Escobar are notorious. Others Byzantine emperor Justinian the Slit Nose, Pope John XII who turned the Vatican into a brothel, the 16th century Scots cannibal Sawney Beane, Baron Ungern Sternberg who conquered Mongolia in 1920 believing he was Genghis Khan reborn, vampiric Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory, Barbarossa the Ottoman pirate king are less familiar. Each biography is accompanied by an article revealing fascinating aspects of those Monsters: Sultan Selim the Grim divulges the secret Ottoman methods of royal murder; ‘Bloody’ Mary evokes the heretic’s death at the stake; we travel with Leopold II of Belgium into the ‘Heart of Darkness’ that was the Belgian Congo; Malawian dictator Dr Banda unveils the strange phenomenon of medical doctors who became murderous tyrants; and, Papa Doc of Haiti reveals the nature of Voodoo. Lavishly illustrated, interspersed with illuminating quotations, both accessible and informative, ‘Monsters‘ is a Who’s Who of the cruel and murderous, the rapacious and depraved, and a gripping compendium of stories, characters and indispensable lessons from history that no one should forget and everyone should know.

Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilisations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence. How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the ‘centre of the world’ and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a gripping narrative, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever changing city in its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalem‘s biography is told through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and who*res who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem. As well as the many ordinary Jerusalemites who have left their mark on the city, its cast varies from Solomon, Saladin and Suleiman the Magnificent to Cleopatra, Caligula and Churchill; from Abraham to Jesus and Muhammad; from the ancient world of Jezebel, Nebuchadnezzar, Herod and Nero to the modern times of the Kaiser, Disraeli, Mark Twain, Rasputin and Lawrence of Arabia. Drawing on new archives, current scholarship, his own family papers and a lifetime’s study, Montefiore illuminates the essence of sanctity and mysticism, identity and empire in a unique story of the city that many believe will be the setting for the Apocalypse. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem: the only city that exists twice in heaven and on earth.