The acclaimed account of the last eighteen months of Tsar Nicholas II's life and reign from one of our finest historians of Russia.

In March 1917, Nicholas II, the last Tsar of All Russia, was forced to abdicate and the Romanov dynasty was driven from power after three hundred years. The Last of the Tsars examines Nicholas’s life from the months before his momentous abdication to his death, with his family, in Ekaterinburg in July 1918. The story has been told many times, but Service’s deep understanding of the period and his forensic examination of untapped sources, including the Tsar’s diaries and recorded conversations, sheds remarkable new light on Nicholas’s troubled reign. The result is a masterful study of a man who was almost entirely out of his depth, perhaps even wilfully so. It is also a compelling account of the social, economic and political ferment in Russia between the February Revolution which overthrew the Tsar and Lenin’s Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917. `Timely and important . . . a fast-paced account of the last sixteen months of the tsar’s life; brief, sharp, but laced with well-judged feeling for the dramas of the time’ Observer `Brilliant, original and compelling’ Evening Standard `Magnificent . . . more detailed and better researched and narrated than any previous account’ Literary Review

‘A timely and important book . . . he brings to it rare clarity and common sense. His book is a fast-paced account of the last sixteen months of the tsar’s life; brief, sharp, but laced with well-judged feeling for the dramas of the time.’ Catherine Merridale, Observer

In March 1917, Nicholas II, the last Tsar of All the Russias, abdicated and the dynasty that had ruled an empire for three hundred years was forced from power by revolution. In this masterful and forensic study, Robert Service examines the last year Nicholas's reign and the months between that momentous abdication and his death, with his family, in Ekaterinburg in July 1918.

Drawing on the Tsar's own diaries and other hitherto unexamined contemporary records, The Last of the Tsars reveals a man who was almost entirely out of his depth, perhaps even willfully so. It is also a compelling account of the social, economic and political foment in Russia in the aftermath of Alexander Kerensky's February Revolution, the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 and the beginnings of Lenin's Soviet republic.