I want to read you a headline in the daily mail, the london daily mail, you wrote this back in january, the romance, the marrieds are and the 16yearold mistress was about love letters of the head of state. I did not actually write that, that is the headline written by the daily mail, headline writer. Buds, i would say that the correspondent is referring to the most outrageous to most explicit correspondent ever written by the head of state. Ive to say the correspondent is outrageous that they edited the daily mail and they said we are a tabloid newspaper in england but we cannot print all of this stuff, we are a family newspaper. Who was it . Who is head of the state . It was the czar emperor, alexander the second, the emperor who liberated first the slaves of russia at exactly the same time as your president lincoln was about to liberate the slaves of america. The two men were correspondent and were assassinated an interesting relationship of that first start. Alexander the second was a sympathetic of all of the the romanovs of the book. So he sort of laid the foundation of the book, he wanted to bring in a constitution which is really the last chance to bring it in. But he was assassinated the day he was going to bring in that constitution. As for the love life, that is another thing altogether. Spee4 it let me ask you, where did you find the love letters. Guest they are in the russian archives in moscow. There is an interesting story there, because because of these love letters have never been worked on by any before. Thats because recently they returned to the russian archives. This is how it happened, when ivan the second was assassinated his widow, his mistress who have become his wife left or russia went to live in paris. They took most of the correspondence with her to paris. They remained in in private hands until 1998. In 1998 the letters were bought. Because in 1945 the red army had captured when they took berlin, vienna they captured the archives and they took them back to moscow. They wanted to swap in the russians agree. So they got their banking archives which are all very interesting im sure. But moscow got these letters and at last we can work at the mall. They are love letters between a 40 somethingyearold emperor and his young schoolgirl, 18yearold mistress. They started their affair, theyre passionate, pregnant, increasingly political, and they are highly uninhibited. Their stuff in these letters that i did not even know were invented in the 18 seventies. I in the 1870s. I thought they were invented in the 21st century. You have to read them to see what im referring to. Cspan the article you wrote and have a racy stuff in it. Guest it doesnt have the racy stuff in it because some of it is very racy even by the standards of 2016. Cspan how long was alexander the second the emperor . Spee2 from 1855 551881. Cspan how was he assassinated . Guest it was a tragedy. He brought in reform. He negotiated the complex but he raised expectations in the 1860s for hypocrisy which he was not willing, this caused a black back last demanding hypocrisy altogether. And these terrorists hunted him like a wild animal. In fact, he believe that because his mistress was there on the day of the assassination attempt he believed she was a guardian angel. There were six attempts to kill him but she cannot save him. When it came to 1881, they had been together for all these years and the bond was thrown in the carriage, he was fine. The carriage was smashed and his dog so please get back in, please and he said no i want to inspect this wounded man, thats what i do im in emperor and it was one more terrace, one more killer and they just threw it bright at his feet and blew his legs to smithereens. He was taken back into the palace where he died on his couch and he became nicholas the second, his grandson. Cspan in reading the book i just kept asking how does this man remember all of this. I could probably get inherent find some statistics you would not remember. What technique do you use in order to put this together . I want you to get into how many roman office there were in all. Guest writing these books is a challenging nightmare. This is only about 400 years but it is 20 or 21 romanovs princes or empresses and it covers so many years so you can imagine every single on monarch in this book have their children wives, ministers, and their great poets and composers and all of this has to be mastered. So writing these these books is a very big mental challenge. I literally emerge myself in the subject. For the few years and i only read about the subject. Obviously afterwards i cannot wait to read some james elroy thrillers. But during it i concentrate absolutely on it. I just work my way from the beginning rain by rain. With each one i read all the books on the subject, first of all. I get all of the books and journals, articles that have been published in russia and ultimately i go to russia i walk around the palaces, look at the archives, and then when i feel like i have i have enough i move on to the next. To the next monarch. You were here last in 2004 and we did an interview in london in 2013. I want to put up on the screen the number of nonfiction books you have written. The audience can then know the kind of thing you have been involved inches we go back to the first one in 2001, catherine and the great stalling, the court of desire which we talked about in 2003. Young 2003. Young stalling, 2007. Jerusalem, the viagra in 2011. We say the romanovs and you said a little different. Yes the it doesnt matter. I want to quote back to 2008 vanity fair article that undoubtedly you remember. In which a friend of yours, who is she . Guest she is a noblest and writer. She is head of the British Museum although she is a very important woman in england. She is the daughter of lord off child. Cspan he is the best lunch date in london. His gossip is so clever ranging trees and across all sections of society. Did you find that to be a compliment . Guest i dont know. What you think . Im not sure that is a compliment. Cspan are you a gossip . Guest i think all human affairs, all human politics is about human relationships. You can call that gossip if you like. Im not terribly interested in gossip and how important on the world stage, but if you look at the books for example, and all of them they have studies of power and how power has an effect on personality and the effect of personality on power. The interesting thing is whether youre talking about a court with chamberlains and ladies in waiting, or whether you are talking about the office of the president of the United States or the Prime Minister of england, elected official, power works in a similar way. It emanates from the person who has been elected who has the power. Whether whether it is a bomb or prudence. I am a student to the way that works. Im fascinated by the way that happens. So i am hoping that this book, you can read an entertainment a lot of shocking murders and arrests. You can look at it as an explanation of how russia works today or you can look upon it as a study of human nature and power. You can call that gossip. But really read p diddly and i will give you an example, in 1881 when i ivan the second was person assassinated. Reform reform really ended until 1917. So personality, again and again in russian history just as in american history, look at trump. Look at the clintons. Again and again personality is decisive and power. My books concentrate on personal. Cspan who was your waiver it personality, not your favorite leader but the one you had the most fun researching. Guest he is a misunderstood character. I wanted to look at him in a political sense as well is in a colorful character. Cspan when was he the upper . Guest until 1725 he died. And that was in 1682 cents he was a child so incredibly long rain. I feel like its breathtaking. It was two of the greatest men and it was captain the great. Add to the most talented individuals in the whole transport story but both of them died at 52. Now i am 50 so theres another statistic i remember. Think of all they achieved in their lives and they died at 52. Cspan lets start with peter the great. Why was he called the great . Guest he achieved so much. He modernized russia, he brought in modern military, modern technology, experts, western forms of government, and they could defeat the greatest military power in europe of that day. Sweden. He founded st. Petersburg a new northern capital, modern city to the north. He conquered the baltic and he created the baltic fleet which made russia for the first time. He did all of this for the force of his personality. Despite all of the rational reasons and the sweetest methods of government and the modern artillery that he developed for the military and the wonderful ships, despite all of this, modern stuff he was always basically an autocrat. He ruled wherever he was. Whatever you said was the government. If he slept of the government slept. When he was drunk, he was drunk, the government was drunk. He was everything. He was the ultimate personal ruler of russia. He was a genius. But he was also a monster. He took part part in the beheadings of his enemies. He tortured his own son to death. He was fascinated with the human body. Dismantling it. I remember when he was in holland and he attended these medical dissections, he was fascinated with the human body. Afterwards he said can i bite the body. I want to see how a dead body feels in your teeth. And then he made his entire entourage do the same. After that he bought his own set of surgical tools. Some of his entourage had a sore tooth and he insisted on cutting it out himself. So after that if you had a sore arm or a bad tooth, or a sore and you are in his entourage, you made sure you never mentioned it. Cspan how many different, he said 21, how many, how many different emperors did you write about . Guest twenty. That actually rule. There there are also many regions, Prime Ministers, any field marshals, many characters, this book has everyone for tchaikovsky and many fascinating and talented people. Was probably the most talented minister the trend ever had. We talk about for many. You go into great detail about him, when did he when did you first pop up in the Russian Society . Guest he first popped up in 1995. I think there is an analysis of him that is been slightly skewed, too much skewed, too much emphasis of whether hes a healer or not. And much more important i think is he represented the Authentic Foundation of the trans trance but there he is unmistakable. Who was the first emperor he had contact with. Guest nicholas the second. Cspan and what was his relationship . Guest there is no love affair. As was rumored. But alexander and nicholas, both absolutely needed him, first of all there is that healing of a hemophiliac story. It was a tragic story and his parents recognized by his child suffering. By his pain as he had almost died repeatedly from hemophiliac attacks. But also the immense stress they paid by insisting that he must succeed to the full plenitude of hypocrisy. So this place enormous stress on the child than on himself. Cspan what year was nicholas the second . Guest this is 19 oh 1904 is when the child was born. And then the next year he remains absolutely key to that right up to his murder in 191916. Cspan nicholas the second was the emperor for how long . Guest over 20 years. Cspan the reason we would talk about it as this is the end of the trans trance. [inaudible] he didnt really come totally and politically important or essential since world war i. In world war i, 1915 nicholas decided to become commanderinchief of the army. He left the the capital in charge of the empress alexander. Now music extremely prudish woman. Religious, who believed absolutely and sacred hypocrisy of the system and complete disdain for democracy. Cspan defined the word autocracy. Guest its just the rule of one man. But sacred autocracy is thinking that you can only be ruled by one man. When nicholas the second left alexander in complete command of politics back in petersburg, she found herself in this preposterous situation having had for over 20 years complete content for all politics in high society and politicians particular. She found the founders of the business of politics. She knew nobody. She had to turn a self righteous very prudent woman had to turn to the one person she felt might know some people in petersburg. And he only knew the most corrupt and depraved people in st. Petersburg. So the irony of irony, the people he center suggested as minister to her were the most depraved and incompetent people in st. Petersburg. This was a catastrophe. This book is based on many correspondence between the czars and the private correspondence. There are several thousand letters between nicholas and alexander at that time. A part of the a fascinating because theyre very sexually passionate about each other, theyre very close, it also reveals how isolated they were. Isolated by their own wishes, by the way. And how much they depended. When you read alexanders letters you rely she was close to being insane. She was unbalanced. When you read the book i think people be amazed just how unstable she was and she would be sending things like cspan there were. Guest the time world war i started in 1914, no one like thats beach. But people cannot face the fact that their responsibility for the misrule and russia belong to the czar and the blamed it on rasputin. They thought if they killed him that would solve the problem. Cspan if you go to st. Petersburg, and a lot of americans do, where would they find nicholas and alexander living at that time . Where did rasputin live . Guest they lived outside of st. Petersburg. They hated saint petersburg. They lived in a suburban palace and they lived in the alexander palace built by catherine the great for her grandson alexander the first. Cspan was at the Winter Palace . Spee2 the Winter Palace was in the center of st. Petersburg. Rasputin lived in a flat in the city. When he came out to see the czar, he would often meet in a small cottage outside the city gate that nobody knew about. It began to printed theres. That little house is still there. Nobody gets to see it, but they should. That is where russia was in a way govern. It was just outside the gates. Because all of the police and so on control by the minister imperial would would make a record of anyone visiting. But this way they could go without anybody knowing but of course everybody knew anyway. Meanwhile also in the city, the use of the palace which Many American tourists will visit, that has has a room where rasputin was killed. The wealthiest man in russia, he was a crossdressing, bisexual interesting character who had studied at the university. Him and his friends was a member of the imperial family. They decided that the only way to save russian save the moniker he was to kill rasputin. They romanticize the killing of respite and in the way that we all knew. That rasputin was going to be poison, he was he was shot but he got up again, it was like a vampire movie, they would put a stake in his heart that finally killed him. But in fact the murder was very different from that. One is that we now know that the british involvement. The British Secret service, the early version of it was involved somehow against him. I may have been involved in the assassination. Rasputin was widely believed to be against the war which was true. That was about the only sensible quality. But that was a very difficult thing to do to stay out of the war. Nicholas the second was really not Strong Enough to withstand the pressure to go into the war. He was on the american side, so the british were interested in him being killed. Want to keep russia in the war, and to to save the monarchy. Without that they would probably leave the war. Many people believe the moniker would be destroyed if rasputin continued his dark influence. So somehow british agents were involved in this plot. What really happened was they went into the house, they shot him once but it didnt kill him, he ran outside and someone from behind and fired at him and brought him down with the second shot it was not fatal. And this is interesting, at this point someone got up with a huge magnum and put it right against rasputin support head, point blank and blew him away. Like that. It was not this romantic sort of gothic story the way you see in hollywood movies, it was more like a coldblooded execution. Heres the famous picture of rasputin on the screen. What affected this have on him and what exact year was he killed. Guest december sixteenth. He he actually they found the body underneath the ice in the river. They threw him under the ice and took a while to find him. And then whats interesting you can see the pointblank shot to the middle of the four head its an execution shot. You can see if pretty clearly. Cspan what impact did it have . Guest it didnt have the impact to anyone expected. Instead of strengthening the anarchy and exposed and emasculated the anarchy. Revealed that nothing change when rasputin die. Nicholas the second was still the same nicholas the second. He did not suddenly start reforming the country are given into a Constitutional Government government or represent adult government. Nothing change. All it showed is the government was hollow. And he was a deeply incompetent ruler. Cspan im at the end for a few reasons, one nicholas and alexanders assassination and the fact that those who took over. Talk to us about the assassination of rasputin, went to to the next step in the process happen. Cspan he died in december of 1916, that was literally then two months afterwards. The irony was this was another revolution, they were all in exile or siberia. In in fact lennon had said just weeks before he said you have missed it, this this revolution is never going to happen in my lifetime. But here it came. It was totally unexpected. And. And yet easily predicted because people started to talk about Food Shortages in the capital and quickly spread. The troops who are in the city started to fantasize with the rebels. Nicholas nicholas was far away at the front. He was right at the front of the headquarters. It took him along time to get back. He was foolish to try to get back in a rush because his train got sidelined, supposedly stopped by workers. And he found himself totally alone in a real race station in the middle of nowhere and he had to ask his generals what to do and his general said, as one and suddenly he was alone in the imperial carriage and he had to sign an application. So then the hemophiliac boy now and his teens and then he spoke to his daughter and he said tell me, is it incurable . The dr. Said no. He said how long could a live . Of the dr. Said he could live a long time time or he could die very young. And then he sort of set, you know what i decided i need to change my plane. Im going to change and lead it to my brothers michael and keep the child with me. Cspan any emperor could say this is where