A new biography of one of history’s most disturbing, dubious masterminds, showing how a Siberian peasant, through his seduction of the imperial household, contributed to the collapse of the greatest autocracy in the world.
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.
