“simon sebag montefiore”

Over 50 of the World's greatest speeches, the stories behind them, and biographies of each speaker, including: Elizabeth I; Charles I; Oliver Cromwell; George Washington; Napoleon; Emmeline Pankhurst; Marie Curie; Gandhi; Stalin; Winston Churchill; Charles de Gaulle; John F. Kennedy; Martin Luther K... More

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 thou... More

Stalin remains one of the creators of our world - like Hitler, the personification of evil. Yet Stalin hid his past and remains mysterious. This enthralling biography that reads like a thriller finally unveils the secret but extraordinary journey of the Georgian cobbler's son who became the Red Tsar... More

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 sex... More

This book is an exquisite introduction to one of the world's most enchanting 18th-century palaces.... More

Winter, 1916: In St Petersburg, Russia on the brink of revolution. Outside the Smolny Institute for Noble Young Ladies, 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. A... More