Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsUnmissable for fans and student s alike
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 September 2014
Many years ago I read Robert K Massie's "Nicholas and Alexandra", which I continue to re-read. Since then I have read many books on the Romanovs and also on European royal families contemporaneous with them. This is the first book I have encountered that is in any way comparable to that first reading experience: poignant, down-to-earth and full of accurate detail, of an ordinary family in extraordinary circumstances.
Nicholas and Alexandra have been much criticised for their failures in public life. Their political survival was however not only virtually impossible because of factors over which they had no control, but their private lives were also made terrible by the chronic illness of their beloved son. Historians are often keen to sit in judgement on the last Tsar, but the Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns, and Spanish Bourbons, who lost their thrones at about the same time and arguably with fewer pressures on them - and in addition held on to their lives - are rarely subjected to such searing criticism.
This book sets out to debunk the image of the four perfect daughters - but in fact, the four girls emerge in their depth and complexity as even more attractive to modern sensibilities. Reflective Olga, elegant Tatiana, warm-hearted Maria and quirky Anastasia, with their pretty clothes, their wild teenage crushes, their hobbies and their often comically uncertain academic progress are recognisable and accessible characters, - in fact, like our own children. They remind us that the Russian Revolution was about people as well as politics. They have become representatives of the destruction, along with the bad, of much that was good and innocent, which is probably why the restored Russian Church now venerates them as martyrs.
Helen Rappaport combines thorough research with an unsentimental humanity that presents the girls as real people: appealing, flawed, unbearably sad. A definitive biography and a well-told story.