Titans of History

Simon Sebag Montefiore is a master storyteller * EVENING STANDARD *Sparkling biographical essays … A tour of the good, the bad and the ugly * MAIL ON SUNDAY *Entertaining and informative. Full of offbeat, fascinating detail * SUNDAY TELEGRAPH *Comprehensive, chilling and highly compelling. A first-class chronologically arranged catalogue that enagages as it teaches * DAILY EXPRESS *Compulsive reading … We do not shudder at the depths to which men and women throughout history have sunk, but experience a piquant relish … a book that reminds us how thin the veneer of civilisation is * THE TIMES *A survey of great historical figures favours villainy over goodness … A compilation of short biographical profiles … catering to our appalled fascination with evil. Monsters outnumber heroes. Stalin, the subject of Montefiore’s superb two-volume biography, is the prototype for many of the maniacal autocrats whose rages and rampages are described here. A strutting parade of psychopathic dictators, warlords, malevolent dwarves … Montefiore finds room for a few gods, one or two secular saints, American founding fathers, Lincoln and Churchill, and a smattering artists and scientists, but their achievements hardly manage to maintain the pretence of civilisation. What excites Montefiore is villainy … and he does this with wicked verve * OBSERVER *

Simon Sebag Montefiore is an internationally bestselling author and historian whose prize-winning books have been published in forty-eight languages. Catherine the Great and Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the British Book Awards History Book of the Year Prize. Young Stalin won the Costa Biography Award (UK), the LA Times Book Prize for Biography (USA), the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique (France), and the Kreisky Prize (Austria). Jerusalem: The Biography - A History of the Middle East was a number one Sunday Times (UK) bestseller, a global bestseller and won The Book of the Year Prize from the Jewish Book Council (US) and the Wenjin Book Prize of the National Library of China (People’s Republic of China). The Romanovs: 1613-1918 won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize (Italy); and The World: A Family History, a NYTimes and Sunday Times bestseller, was named The Times History Book of the Year. In 2025, he was awarded the Blue Metropolis Words to Change Prize (Canada) for “his body of work in humanity and history.’ He is also the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: Sashenka, Red Sky at Noon and One Night in Winter, which won the Paddy Power Political Novel of the Year Prize. He read history at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University where he received his PhD. He is the presenter of five history series for the BBC and many of his books are being developed for movies or drama series.

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