Book description
History's greatest love story, Catherine the Great and Potemkin is a
sweeping epic of sex, love, power, conquest and extravagance on a
magnificent Russian scale. Not only was their romance wildly passionate
but they were also probably the most successful political partnership of
all, outstripping Antony and Cleopatra or Napoleon and Josephine. Their
secret letters, which discuss other lovers, sex, wars, politics, arts
and health, are surely the most intimate and extraordinary ever written
by an empress or politician. Both characters in this joint biography,
based on new archives, are extraordinary: she a German princess married
lovelessly at 14 to the Russian heir combined charm, passion and
political genius. She ruthlessly seized power and ruled triumphantly for
thirty years; he - a brilliant flamboyant politician, strategist and
conqueror of wild eccentricity and debauchery. Outrageously sexual and
political, he was the love of her life. They shocked Europe by taking
younger lovers yet they secretly married and ruled together as best
friends, and lifelong lovers. Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote about the
post-Soviet wars in Russia for the Sunday Times and New York Times
during the1990s and is now a full-time historian
