About the Author

Frances Welch has written for the Sunday Telegraph, Granta, The Spectator and the Financial Times. She is co-author of Memories of Revolution: Russian Women Remember, The Romanov + Mr Gibbes and A Romanov Fantasy: Life at the Court of Anna Anderson. She is married to the writer Craig Brown, and has two children. She lives in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

Reviews

A gripping account of the Romanovs' choppy passage into exile. Welch's detective work has produced a book that is wonderfully witty and sad by turns.
*Mail on Sunday*

The book's readability and telling use of detail are splendid.
*Spectator*

A quirky and gripping vignette of 20th-century Russian history.
*Sunday Times*

A gripping account of the Romanovs choppy passage into exile. Welch s detective work has produced a book that is wonderfully witty and sad by turns.
*Mail on Sunday*

Yes, it's been told before, but the 1919 exile of the Romanov family from Russia, in which they sailed on HMS Marlborough, is a splendidly exotic story that is well worth another airing; and Frances Welsh does it grippingly here, with lots of details I hadn't come across before. I loved to read of the goods they brought with them, including rolled-up Rembrandt paintings, Faberge eggs and other treasures of the sort. What a pilgrimage, to be sure.
*Sunday Telegraph*

A fascinating, poignant portrait of a bizarre collection of people caught up in the chaos of their exodus"
*The Irish Times*

A voyage of delight - revealing, fascinating and by turns shocking and amusing - a story so extraordinary that it reads like a novel.
*Lancashire Evening Post*

Brooks gets inside the head, explains how the brain works... it's like frieze-framing a novel and discussing the motivation of the characters. It's fascinating...
*Evening Standard*