About the Author

Simon Sebag Montefiore was born in 1965 and read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, where he received his Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD). Catherine the Great and Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper, and Marsh Biography Prizes. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards. Young Stalin won the Costa Biography Award (UK), the LA Times Book Prize for Biography (US), Le Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique (France) and the Kreisky Prize for Political Literature (Austria). Jerusalem: The Biography won the Jewish Book of the Year Prize, from the Jewish Book Council (USA). Dr Montefiore's books are published in forty languages. He is also the author of the novel, Sashenka. His next novel, Love in an Age of Ice, will be published in September 2013 in the UK and spring 2014 in the USA. His next major history book will be The Romanovs: Rise and Fall, 1613-1917, out in 2016 in hardback, 2017 in paperback, followed by The World: a Biography. Dr Montefiore wrote and presented the BBC television series Jerusalem: Making of a Holy City and Rome: History of the Eternal City. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Visiting Professor of Humanities at the University of Buckingham, he lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children.