Beevor makes no claim to have uncovered any great revelations ... With his characteristically sharp eye for telling detail, extracts enough gems to decorate a whole Romanov party dress ... Despite the crowded historiographical field, Beevor finds a fresh angle. His thesis is that the myth was actually a key part of Rasputin’s political and ultimately historical impact ... An exceptionally well-sourced, morally serious and often darkly comic account.
A fascinating, evidence-based biography that absorbs throughout ... This scrupulously researched book helps explain how a social-climbing, charismatic mystic from Siberia helped bring down one of the world’s oldest autocracies ... Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs, this readable and wonderfully informative biography, opens a window on to the fantasy world of the Russian royal couple and their delusion that a soothsayer from Siberia could ever be their salvation.
Beevor is one of our finest narrative historians, with sharp judgment, a sweet pen and a deep understanding of the world in which he works ... Rather than trying to make sense of Rasputin the man — a task as hopeless as trying to catch smoke — Beevor uses him to illuminate the tragic blundering by which he nudged the Romanov dynasty into their graves and Russia into the arms of Bolshevism ... Beautifully written ... Rasputin is a meditation on history as well as a masterclass in smooth, judicious prose.
Beevor is a distinguished historian of 20th-century crisis, and what he relates here has been solidly documented archivally with the help of the Russian scholar Lyuba Vinogradova. The result is crisply written and swiftly narrated: it tells a very good story ... Without a strikingly different angle or stash of original material to offer, Beevor springs no surprises – and treads territory that’s already thoroughly mapped ... Worse, Beevor’s picture of Rasputin himself is strangely two-dimensional, lacking in nuance ... A decent book, but a disappointing one. It is not among Beevor’s best.
Beevor persuasively argues that many—but not all—of the most salacious stories about Rasputin were exaggerated or fabricated, but the corruption which seemed to follow in his wake was very real ... Rasputin’s role in the downfall of the Romanovs has been shrouded in legend, and this eerily timely book illustrates the sordid reality behind the sinister myth.
A crisp narrative ... Beevor blends arresting imagery, bizarre details, and mordant observations ... An informative page-turner on the mystic who captivated the last czar’s family.
