Superlative memoir of survival ... Few wartime memoirs convey with such harrowing immediacy the evil of the Nazi genocide ... Her book is a model documentary

Not only a record of terrible deprivation but also a kind of unexpected nobility ... extraordinary

Lucidly told with deeply etched personality sketches,thanks to the author's use of her teenage diary, now in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

This vividly detailed and taut narrative is a fitting tribute to the bravery of victims and righteous gentiles alike

Brilliantly readable

Well-paced, a thoroughly polished, professional piece of work. A macabre family saga

An entertaining study of power and personality portrays the strutting absurdity and grotesque glamour of the last emperors on the eve of catastrophe

Fascinating. Carter is a gifted storyteller and has written a very readable account

Carter's intelligent, entertainging and informative book folds dynastic and political narratives into a panoramic account of Europe's road to war

In her group biography of three monarchs, Carter has succeeded in painting their personalities in vivid colours...she brings an excellent biographer's eye for the telling detail...the great appeal of this book lies in it narration and comparative analysis of the life and personality of her imperial subjects...well-researched and expertly written...an engaging and remarkably even-handed portrayal

That these three absurd men could ever have held the fate of Europe in their hands is a fact as hilarious as it is terrifying. I haven't enjoyed a historical biography this much since Lytton Strachey's Victoria

Miranda Carter writes with lusty humour, has a fresh clarifying intelligence, and a sharp eye for telling details. This is traditional narrative history with a 21st-century zing. A real corker of a book

A highly original way of looking at the years that led up to 1914

Carter deftly interpolates history with psychobiography to provide a damning indictment of monarchy in all its forms

A depiction of bloated power and outsize personalities in which Carter picks apart the strutting absurdity of the last emperors on the eve of catastrophe

Takes what should have been a daunting subject and through sheer wit and narrative élan turns it into engaging drama. Carter has a notable gift for characterisation