Rappaport has dug deeply in archives around the world and uncovered a wealth of new information that is certain to make The Race to Save the Romanovs the definitive work on the subject. The story is both fascinating and tragic ... Rappaport does away with the mistaken notion that it was all somehow King George’s fault ... Now, thanks to her excellent book, she has put to rest the fallacy that any one person could have saved the last Romanovs, either from the Bolsheviks or from themselves.

July is the centenary of the execution of Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and their five children. The story has retained its popular allure, despite being told many times before. Romanoviana has been kept alive by the classical echoes of hubris before the fall and the lurid violence of the murders — several of the Romanov daughters were bayoneted to death...Adding to the drama of the final act was the long build-up. The Romanovs endured 15 months of captivity, grimly awaiting their fate at the hands of the Bolsheviks ... This makes for a gripping narrative, which Helen Rappaport recounts with a light touch in The Race to Save the Romanovs. She has uncovered many missing pieces in the story, from the diplomatic wrangling over the tsar’s fate to a number of 'hare-brained' rescue schemes hatched by monarchist sympathisers.

A deep dive into archives and obscure sources, Rappaport’s book exposes the feckless and ultimately futile ideas to rescue the imprisoned Romanovs that surfaced between Nicholas’s abdication and the family’s murder in the summer of 1918 ... Much of the book focuses on the action— and inaction—of King George V; indeed, one gets the sense that Rappaport’s intent is to rehabilitate the man often blamed for refusing to grant sanctuary to his Russian cousins ... In the end, even Rappaport has to agree that George 'may have been a moral coward' in forcing his government to abandon asylum ... Rather than blaming King George for forcing his government to withdraw asylum, Rappaport’s finely researched and elegantly written book asserts that 'responsibility should be more widely, and equally, apportioned.' It’s a fair point.

Lieutenant Boris Solovev...devised a plan to rescue Tsar Nicholas II from house arrest in the west Siberian town of Tobolsk. This was just weeks after Lenin’s Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia, and the prospects for the Romanovs were starting to look bleak ... He claimed he had found 300 'loyal' soldiers who could overcome the guards in the mansion where the tsar and his family were imprisoned. Then, in freezing midwinter, he would escort his royal charges 1,300 miles through a chaotic Russia, where civil war had erupted, to Murmansk. There, a ship or submarine would take them to a country willing to give them asylum. All he needed was the money ... Around 175,000 gold rubles were found from the tsar and friends (around £2.1m today) and handed to Solovev. The money was never seen again, nor were the 300 soldiers or a ship, let alone a submarine or a rescue plan ... For nearly 100 years rumours have abounded about myriad so-called plots to free the tsar. As Rappaport shows, 'the truth behind the secret plans to rescue'.

With almost all the ruling families across Europe were related...thanks to Queen Victoria’s prodigious matchmaking skills...Alexandra Feodorovna, went on to marry her cousin Nicholas II, the czar of Russia ... So why, given all the family ties, were 'Alicky' and 'Nicky' left to die at the hands of revolutionaries? Many of the royal cousins attempted to create a plan for rescue, but the bulk of the blame for their deaths has generally been laid on King George V. But in her new book, The Race to Save the Romanovs,, historian Helen Rappaport argues that British anti-royal sentiment in that era was so strong that rescuing the Romanovs could have been disastrous for King George’s family. This is not the sweet, sacrificial Nicholas and Alexandra of other biographies. Rappaport writes—with substantial evidence—that the czar was a weak leader, and the czarina was a decided and sometimes oblivious partisan. They were, however, deeply devoted to one another and to their children. Ultimately, however, what resonates is the irony of the book’s title. There was no 'race,' or even a jog: The Romanovs were all but abandoned by their extended family.

Revolution and terror usually go hand in hand. Revolutionists seek to make a new world and frequently resort to terror and murder to eradicate the remnants of the old world...The Bolshevik revolution, followed this familiar path ... Historian Helen Rappaport in her new book The Race to Save the Romanovs combed through the archives of the major European powers of the time and many other sources...the result is an intriguing work of investigative writing that answers some but not all of the lingering questions surrounding plans to save the Russian imperial family.

Rappaport approaches the Romanov massacre from an entirely new angle, exploring the various failed plots and schemes to save the doomed royal family ... The tragic fate of the Romanovs continues to confound and fascinate, and Rappaport...continues to mine their story for nonfiction gold, as she attempts to get at the 'truth of what really happened in 1917–1918.'

Russia and Germany were at war, and revolutionary fervor was rising in Petrograd ... British procrastination and backpedaling in offering asylum to the imperial family after Nicholas’s abdication in March 1917. She describes the confusion within the provisional government about what to do with the ex-czar and the misguided hope that Kaiser Wilhelm might make the family’s safe exit from Russia a condition of the armistice ending Russia’s involvement in WWI. Relying on fresh archival material, Rappaport dispels some mystery about secret Western rescue plans—that is to say, she clarifies that they were nonexistent.

British historian Rappaport...lays the groundwork by summarizing Nicholas’ tumultuous reign and the list of grievances that Russia’s new communist regime and many citizens had against him. Short mini-biographies of the royal couple, their four daughters and one son make the point that isolation from their subjects caused resentment to build and made the leaders of the Bolshevik government intent on swift, brutal justice ... Rappaport’s research uncovered some previously unknown efforts by British and German monarchs to rescue the Romanovs and provide them with safe haven ... The book’s most gripping sections describe the days and hours leading up to and including the family’s execution. Rappaport spares few details; indeed, some unduly lengthy recitals of meals and similar trivialities could have been omitted. There’s no flab, however, in her grisly evocation of the scene after the execution: 'The corpses, many of them with hideous, gaping head wounds and broken and dislocated limbs, were now horribly mangled and ugly, their hair matted with caked blood. It was almost impossible to associate these wretched twisted bodies with the five charming, vibrant children of the official publicity.'