Catherine the Great and Potemkin: Power, Love and the Russian Empire

Review One of the great love stories of history in a league with Napoleon and Josephine and Antony and Cleopatra ... Excellent, with dazzling mastery of detail and literary flair ― THE ECONOMISTA rather wonderful book ... -- Mick Jagger ― SUNDAY TIMESIf you want a good racy historical read, CATHERINE THE GREAT & POTEMKIN certainly provides it! Book of the Year -- Antonia FraserIt is a wonderful story, and Simon Sebag Montefiore tells it with joyful verve. He evidently warms to Potemkin's overblown personality and relishes the adventurers who swarmed around him. He has a firm grasp of the politics at the Russian court and of the diplomatic context, which is not easy, since the centre of gravity of this story shifts between St Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin and Istanbul. He is very good on the relationship between Potemkin and Catherine. His explanation of the day-to-day mechanics of the unusual ménage is light-handed, movingly told and psychologically credible -- Adam Zamoyski ― THE TIMESThis well researched and highly ambitious biography has succeeded triumphantly in re-creating the life of an extraordinary man of mixed moods... Sebag Montefiore also provides a remarkably good panorama of the period -- Antony Beevor ― SUNDAY TIMESClearly what fascinates Sebag Montefiore is the man himself - his personality, his achievements, his lifelong relationship with his sovereign/lover - and that fascination shines through every page of this book. Although more than 500 pages long, it could easily have been double the length, so enjoyable is it to read ― SUNDAY TELEGRAPHWith great industry and huge enthusiasm he has combed the archives to give us a detailed account of a gigantic but, until now, almost forgotten figure. The writing is fluent, the sympathy obvious ― SUNDAY EXPRESSThis exhaustive and beautifully-written biography... Montefiore vividly brings to life his supporting cast of envious conspirators, aristocratic mistresses, dandies, diplomats and adventurers ― DAILY MAILThe contradictions in Potemkin's character are beautifully brought out in this magnificent biography ― INDEPENDENTMontefiore's reputation so far has been for lively journalism and a couple of novels. With this lavish biography he has announced himself as a historian who deserves to be taken seriously ― EVENING STANDARDThis splendid biography, as sprawling, magnificent and exotic as its subject, provides for the first time in English a fully researched, accurate and immensely readable history of this extraordinary man ― LITERARY REVIEWMagnificent ... Montefiore's passionate and committed revisionism on behalf of his hero is just one of a host of excellent things about this book. Massively researched in Russian archives, it is a work of fine scholarship ... This is a superb biography and it is hard to see how it can ever be superseded ― FINANCIAL TIMESExhilarating ... In describing Potemkin's career, Sebag Montefiore succeeds admirably in capturing its scale and ambition -- Stella Tillyard ― MAIL ON SUNDAYThis gripping and richly researched biography ... CATHERINE THE GREAT & POTEMKIN makes it easy to see why novelists are often seduced away from fiction to write biography - where, just sometimes, implausible reality exceeds plausible fantasy many times over ― TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENTAn example of how to make a page-turner out of the most profound scholarship ― NEW STATESMANImpeccably researched, beautifully written and handsomely presented, it takes us at an unslackening pace through the colourful life of one of the most legendary of all Russians, a war hero, consummate politician, visionary and lover of Catherine the Great ― DAILY MAILA triumph of research and a joy to read -- Antony Beevor ― INDEPENDENTThis book is a conspicuous achievement. The author's researches have been extensive and his command of his subject exemplary. His writing has the quality of a vivid soap-opera of the highest class, more than equal to his subject. He brings out Potemkin's personal