biography of all russia's rulers it is catherine who most deserves the epithet 'great', says simon sebag montefiore Catherine the Great, c1770 Vain and ruthless, she was also cultured and a political genius

From: The Sunday Telegraph London | Date: April 9, 2006| Author: | Copyright information

Catherine the Great:

Love, Sex and Power

BY VIRGINIA ROUNDING

HUTCHINSON, pounds 20, 566 pp T pounds 18 ( pounds 1.25 p&p) 0870 428 4115

Catherine the Great had no claim to the Russian throne whatsoever; she was not even Russian. To seize the imperial crown, she overthrew her own husband, the Emperor Peter III, and was responsible, to greater and lesser degrees, for his murder (and that of another earlier emperor, Ivan VI, imprisoned since childhood).

Catherine may have been vain, ruthless, ambitious and duplicitous but she was also tolerant, generous, well-intentioned, cultured, superbly ...

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