by Simon Sebag Montefiore
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by Simon Sebag Montefiore
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by Simon Sebag Montefiore
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by Virginia Rounding
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by Orlando Figes
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Amazon.co.uk Review
For most of the 20th century Grigory Potemkin has existed as no more than an entertaining side-show for Russian historians. And make no mistake--he is very entertaining; in the Russian royal court of Catherine the Great that was noted for its sexual promiscuity, Potemkin stood out as the libertine par excellence. Although his affair with Catherine only lasted a couple of years, after which he moved on to a succession of nieces and became Catherine's procurer-in-chief, Potemkin remained the love of her life and remained a powerful figure at court. In his new doorstop of a biography, Simon Sebag-Montefiore aims to show that Potemkin is much more than a historical divertissement and is instead one of the central figures of political influence in 18th-century Russia--and by and large he succeeds. Sebag-Montefiore refutes the image of the paper tiger who erected cardboard villages along the banks of Dnieper to convince Catherine that the colonisation of the Ukraine was continuing apace, and instead credits him as the architect for the cities of Odessa and Sebastapol that emerged out of his Great Plan to secure the Crimea--and hence a southern coastline--for Russia. At times, one feels that perhaps Sebag-Montefiore doth protest too much and that he pushes his claims for Potemkin too far. But this is more than compensated for by his enthusiasm. Many historians these days write with a jaded eye, looking to debunk popular heroes; Sebag-Montefiore aims to do the opposite and he has combined his journalist's eye for a good story with an academic's attention to research and detail to create a highly readable biography which is accessible even to those who know little of the period. --John Crace
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Antony and Cleopatra. Napoleon and Josephine. To these great love affairs that helped change history must be added the lesser-known known, but just as influential couple: Catherine the Great of Russia and Grigory Potemkin. The name 'Potemkin' is best-known today for a battleship mutiny at the time of the Russian revolution, rather than as the one-eyed, fat, vain, autocratic lover of Russia's Empress Catherine, the only man she treated as an equal, who commanded her armies, helped her rule the country and develop the Russian empire. POTEMKIN's life is about power, lust and love, as enthralling a love story as any fiction. Born of a loveless marriage, he worked his way up through the ranks of the Russian army. He first met the Empress Catherine while he was on guard duty in St Petersburg. German-born, she was married at fourteen for dynastic reasons, but her marriage was never consummated. She took a procession of lovers, but showed the longest fidelity to Potemkin. The thousands of letters he and Catherine exchanged (often several times each day) are one of the sources of Simon Sebag Montifiore's new biography.
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First Sentence
Shortly before noon on 5 October 1791, the slow cavalcade of carriages, attended by liveried footmen and a squadron of Cossacks in the uniform of the Black Sea Host, stopped halfway down a dirt track on a desolate hillside in the midst of the Bessarabian steppe. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Shortly before noon on 5 October 1791, the slow cavalcade of carriages, attended by liveried footmen and a squadron of Cossacks in the uniform of the Black Sea Host, stopped halfway down a dirt track on a desolate hillside in the midst of the Bessarabian steppe. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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