A family chronicle of the imperial dynasty, from Tsar Alexander's birth in 1818 to the death of his youngest daughter in 1959
The lives of Tsars Alexander II and Alexander III have hitherto received little attention. Yet their reigns set in train the events which would culminate in the destruction of the Romanov dynasty and the tragic fate of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family.
Alexander II, who reigned from 1855 to 1881, was an enlightened ruler who presided over and actively encouraged measures such as the emancipation of the serfs, and local government reform, while his sympathy with the Slavonic races under Turkish rule lef to a victorious war with Turkey. However his last years were overshadowed by civil unrest and several attempts on his life, ending in his assassination. This book examines his life and reign, and those of his successors; his son Tsar Alexander III, whose determination to bring his father's murderers to justice brought more violence in his wake, and his siblings; and his grandson Tsar Nicholas II, whose rule saw a doomed attempt at expansion in the Far East and Russia's disastrous involvement in the First World War, which contributed to the revolution.
This book also looks at the lives of Alexander II's other children, including the shortlived Nicholas, who died at the age of 21; the reactionary Serge, also the victim of an assassin; and his second family with Princess Yourievsky, the last-born of whom survived the fall of the Russian Empire by over forty years, settling in England where she died peacefully in 1959.
Excerpt
"But somehow she still exudes a certain atmosphere of grandeur...It was a depressing visit, but she was so cheerful that she has obviously achieved a certain philosophy of life. As we left her to her loneliness and drove away, I remarked that she is one of those people to whom every misfortune falls. She even found her last servant dead in bed a few weeks ago, and her three beloved Pekinese have all died recently."
Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon on Princess Yourievsky, 1942
Jack Kelly was a child performer, son of New York model, Nan Kelly, brother of actress, Nancy Kelly, brother-in-law of actor Edmond O'Brien and cinematographer Fred Jackman, Jr. On TV, from 1957 until 1962, he was James Garner's brother on the show,
This book has been eight years in the making. It is mostly a jumble of thoughts written down in old spiral notebooks and hidden in the bottom drawer underneath various manuals for software packages and hardware long since turned obsolete.
