Her study of the Empress’s personality, habits, views, life as she led it, is intimate and illuminating. Here is the truth about Rasputin, with new light on the legend of his power over the Royal Household, the inner reason for the scandalous reports circulated concerning him and the Empress, and a grim, enthralling account of his death and burial. Lili Dehn was the first person to whom the Empress came with the news of the Tsar’s abdication, and she witnessed his return after that supreme humiliation.

There are dramatic elements in the narrative of the early days of the Revolution; in the pictures of life at Tsarskoe Selo while the Tsar and his family were under arrest; and in the record of the writer’s own imprisonment and adventurous escape. The interest of the book is intensified by the often deeply pathetic letters written to Lili Dehn by the Tsaritsa from captivity. This revelation at first hand of the whole tragedy of the Empress, as a wife and a mother, and of all that led to the downfall of a great dynasty, makes a profoundly human appeal.