The No1 Ethical retailer for Books, CD’s, DVD’s & Games
30 Day Refund Guarantee

Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin

Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin

by SimonSebagMontefiore (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2000

    $4.64

  • Used

    Paperback 2011

    $3.36
Synopsis

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. As a soldier and consummate politician Potemkin's legacy was to secure the boundaries of Russia to the south that we know today. When he died, aged only fifty en route to assume the mantle of King of Poland, Catherine went into a depression from which she never fully recovered. Sebag Montefiore, who worked in Russia for the Sunday Times among other newspapers, speaks the language fluently and has taken advantage of the opening up of hitherto closed Russian archives.

$4.64

Save:$27.76 (86%)

Quantity

1 in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 512
 Edition: First Ed
 Publisher: W&N
Published: 21 Sep 2000
ISBN 10: 029781902X
ISBN 13: 9780297819028
Book Overview: * As enthralling a story as Amanda Foreman's GEORGIANA * Publication to coincide with Catherine the Great exhibition from the Hermitage in St Petersburg, which opens in the newly restored Somerset House overlooking the Thames.

Media Reviews
One of the great love stories of history in a league with Napoleon and Josephine and Antony and Cleopatra ... Excellent, with dazzling mastery of detail and literary flair * Economist *
A rather wonderful book ... -- Mick Jagger * Sunday Times *
If you want a good racy historical read, CATHERINE THE GREAT & POTEMKIN certainly provides it! Book of the Year -- Antonia Fraser
It is a wonderful story, and Simon Sebag Montefiore tells it with joyful verve. He evidently warms to Potemkin's overblown personality and relishes the adventurers who swarmed around him. He has a firm grasp of the politics at the Russian court and of the diplomatic context, which is not easy, since the centre of gravity of this story shifts between St Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin and Istanbul. He is very good on the relationship between Potemkin and Catherine. His explanation of the day-to-day mechanics of the unusual menage is light-handed, movingly told and psychologically credible -- Adam Zamoyski * The Times *
This well researched and highly ambitious biography has succeeded triumphantly in re-creating the life of an extraordinary man of mixed moods... Sebag Montefiore also provides a remarkably good panorama of the period -- Antony Beevor * Sunday Times *
Clearly what fascinates Sebag Montefiore is the man himself - his personality, his achievements, his lifelong relationship with his sovereign/lover - and that fascination shines through every page of this book. Although more than 500 pages long, it could easily have been double the length, so enjoyable is it to read -- Anne Applebaum * Sunday Telegraph *
With great industry and huge enthusiasm he has combed the archives to give us a detailed account of a gigantic but, until now, almost forgotten figure. The writing is fluent, the sympathy obvious -- Nigel Jones * Sunday Express *
This exhaustive and beautifully-written biography... Montefiore vividly brings to life his supporting cast of envious conspirators, aristocratic mistresses, dandies, diplomats and adventurers -- Christopher Hudson * Daily Mail *
The contradictions in Potemkin's character are beautifully brought out in this magnificent biography -- Petronella Wyatt * Independent *
Montefiore's reputation so far has been for lively journalism and a couple of novels. With this lavish biography he has announced himself as a historian who deserves to be taken seriously -- Victor Sebestyen * Evening Standard *
This splendid biography, as sprawling, magnificent and exotic as its subject, provides for the first time in English a fully researched, accurate and immensely readable history of this extraordinary man -- Nikolai Tolstoy * Literary Review *
Magnificent ... Montefiore's passionate and committed revisionism on behalf of his hero is just one of a host of excellent things about this book. Massively researched in Russian archives, it is a work of fine scholarship ... This is a superb biography and it is hard to see how it can ever be superseded -- Frank McLynn * Financial Times *
Exhilarating ... In describing Potemkin's career, Sebag Montefiore succeeds admirably in capturing its scale and ambition -- Stella Tillyard * Mail on Sunday *
This gripping and richly researched biography ... CATHERINE THE GREAT & POTEMKIN makes it easy to see why novelists are often seduced away from fiction to write biography - where, just sometimes, implausible reality exceeds plausible fantasy many times over -- Peter Nasmyth * TLS *
An example of how to make a page-turner out of the most profound scholarship * New Statesman *
Impeccably researched, beautifully written and handsomely presented, it takes us at an unslackening pace through the colourful life of one of the most legendary of all Russians, a war hero, consummate politician, visionary and lover of Catherine the Great -- Simon Heffer * Daily Mail *
A triumph of research and a joy to read -- Antony Beevor * Books of the Year, Independent Weekend Review *
This book is a conspicuous achievement. The author's researches have been extensive and his command of his subject exemplary. His writing has the quality of a vivid soap-opera of the highest class, more than equal to his subject. He brings out Potemkin's personality perfectly... Potemkin is depicted in this work as the giant he undoubtedly was, and the biography will secure him a new audience, and a renewed place in history * Country Life *
POTEMKIN opened up a whole world ... to me. Book of the year -- Alain de Botton * Independent *
This irresistible biography is history from above. To write this stupendous, engaging tour de force, the first biography of Potemkin in any language since 1891, Montefiore has devoted many hours in the archives of Moscow and Petersburg and covered thousands of miles of the former Russian empire ... -- Philip Mansel * Spectator *
Author Bio

Simon Sebag Montefiore is a prizewinning historian whose bestselling books have been published in over forty-five languages. CATHERINE THE GREAT AND POTEMKIN was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; STALIN: THE COURT OF THE RED TSAR won the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards; YOUNG STALIN won the Costa Biography Award, LA Times Biography Prize and Le Grand Prix de Biographie; JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY was a number one bestseller and won the Jewish Book Council's Book of the Year prize; THE ROMANOVS: 1613-1918 was an international bestseller and won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize. Montefiore is also the author of the acclaimed novels SASHENKA, RED SKY AT NOON and ONE NIGHT IN WINTER, which won the Paddy Power Political Fiction Book of the Year Award. He read history at Cambridge University where he received his PhD, and now lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children.
www.simonsebagmontefiore.com
@simonmontefiore
www.facebook.com/pages/Simon-Sebag-Montefiore