‘It was hard to be a tsar,’ Simon Sebag Montefiore writes in his opening sentence, and what follows fully bears this out. In his thought-provoking introduction, he stresses the unique nature of Russian autocracy and its perverse contradictions; the tsar was absolute ruler, yet he was bound by a tangle of restrictions.
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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £20.99. Tel: 08430 600033. Adam Zamoyski’s many books include Phantom Terror, Moscow 1812 and Holy Madness.
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