Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses

The haunting true story of the four daughters of Russia's last Tsar, brutally murdered in 1918. In Four Sisters, acclaimed biographer Helen Rappaport offers readers the most authoritative account yet of the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. Drawing on their own letters and diaries, she paints a vivid picture of their lives in the dying days of the Romanov dynasty.

We see, almost for the first time, their journey from a childhood of enormous privilege, throughout which they led a very sheltered and largely simple life, to young womanhood – their first romantic crushes, their hopes and dreams, the difficulty of coping with a mother who was a chronic invalid and a haemophiliac brother, and, latterly, the trauma of the revolution and its terrible consequences.

Compellingly readable, meticulously researched and deeply moving, Four Sisters gives these young women a voice, and allows their story to resonate for readers almost a century after their death.

'An astoundingly intimate tale of domestic life lived in the crucible of power' – Observer