The Romanovs

The Romanovs were the most successful dynasty of modern times, ruling a sixth of the world's surface. How did one family turn a war-ruined principality into the world's greatest empire? And how did they lose it all? This is the intimate story of twenty tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition. Montefiore's gripping chronicle reveals their secret world of unlimited power and ruthless empire-building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence and wild extravagance, and peopled by a cast of adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries and poets. Written with dazzling literary flair, drawing on new archival research, THE ROMANOVS is at once an enthralling chronicle of triumph and tragedy, love and death, a universal study of power, and an essential portrait of the empire that still defines Russia today.

Simon Sebag Montefiore is an internationally bestselling author and historian whose prize-winning books have been published in forty-eight languages. Catherine the Great and Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the British Book Awards History Book of the Year Prize. Young Stalin won the Costa Biography Award (UK), the LA Times Book Prize for Biography (USA), the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique (France), and the Kreisky Prize (Austria). Jerusalem: The Biography - A History of the Middle East was a number one Sunday Times (UK) bestseller, a global bestseller and won The Book of the Year Prize from the Jewish Book Council (US) and the Wenjin Book Prize of the National Library of China (People's Republic of China). The Romanovs: 1613-1918 won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize (Italy); and The World: A Family History, a NYTimes and Sunday Times bestseller, was named The Times History Book of the Year. In 2025, he was awarded the Blue Metropolis Words to Change Prize (Canada) for "his body of work in humanity and history.' He is also the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: Sashenka, Red Sky at Noon and One Night in Winter, which won the Paddy Power Political Novel of the Year Prize. He read history at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University where he received his PhD. He is the presenter of five history series for the BBC and many of his books are being developed for movies or drama series.