our bus also made a stop at wide row wilson high school in washington, d.c.. a special thank you to our cable company, comcast cable for helping to coordinate this. announcer: coming up next, "q&a" with simon sebag montefiore. then, and 7:00, we open our phone lines and get your reaction to yesterday's shooting in orlando, florida.

♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," author simon sebag montefiore. he discusses his book, "the romanovs." about the dynasty that ruled russia for over 300 years. brian: simon sebag montefiore, the book is called the "romanovs: 1613-1918." i want to read your headline in the "london daily mail." you wrote this back in january. simon: [chuckles] i did not actually wrote that. that's the headline by the

"daily mail" headline writer. would say, it is the most outrageous and most explicit correspondence ever written by a head of state. i have to say the correspondence is so outrageous that they edited "the daily mail." they rang me up. they said, we're a tabloid newspaper. we can't print this stuff. we're a family newspaper. brian: who was it? who was the head of state? simon: the head of state was tsar emperor alexander the ii. the emperor who liberated the serbs the slaves of russia. at exactly at the same time 1861 as your president lincoln was about to liberate the slaves of america, the two men were in correspondence. both of them were assassinated. so, an interesting relationship. for a start. and alexander ii was the most , sympathetic of all the romanovs of this book.

and he also brought in jury trials and local electorate assemblies. he lays down the foundation for reform. he wanted to bring in a constitution which is the last proper chance to bring it in. but he was assassinated the day he was going to bring the constitution. as for the love life, that's another thing all together. brian: let me ask you first, what did you find the love letters? simon: they're in the russian archive in moscow. in interesting story there, because these love letters have never been worked on by any historians before. because they were only recently returned to the russian archives when alexander ii was assassinated. his widow, his mistress, who had become his wife, princess katya left to paris. she took 3,000 of outrageous letters. with her to paris she took it.

where they remained in private hands until 1998. and in 1998, the rothchild banking family bought these letters. why? because in 1945, the red army had captured when they took berlin and vienna but captured the archives and they took them back to moscow. and they wanted to swap. and the russians agreed. so the rothchilds got their banking archives, which aren't very interesting i am sure. but moscow got these letters. and they're love letters between a 40-something-year-old emperor and his young schoolgirl, 18-year-old mistress when they met and they started their affair. they are passionate, poignant, they're increasingly political. and they are highly uninhibited and sexual. in fact, there is stuff in these letters that i did not even know was invented in the 1870's. i thought it was invented in the 21st century. but you'll have to read them to

know what i'm referring to. brian: so this article doesn't have all the racy stuff in it? simon: it doesn't have all the racy stuff in it because some of it is very racy even by the standards of 2016. brian: how long was alexander ii the emperor? simon: he was emperor from 1855 to 1881. brian: how was he assassinated? simon: well, it was a tragedy. he believed in reform. he brought in reform. he negotiated this complex emancipation. in, he raised expectations the 1960's for reform of autocracy which he was not willing to fulfill. this caused a backlash that led to a terrorist movement demanding destruction of the on talker see altogether. the terrorists hunted him like a wild animal. he believed because his mistress was there on the first time of his assassination attempt he believes that she was his guardian angel.

there were six attempts to kill him. but she could not save him. when it came to 1881, they had been together for all of these years. the bomb was thrown at his carriage. he was fine. the carriage was smashed. but he got out and he inspected the dead and wounded. his guards and said, please, get back in the carriage. please. and he said no, i want to inspect. i am the emperor. that is what i do, i am the emperor. and there was one more terrorist killer. and he threw the bomb right at the emperor's feet and blew his legs to smithereens. he was taken back to the winter palace. one of the people who saw him die was the little boy who became nicholas ii, his grandson. brian: in reading your book, i just kept asking how does this man remember all this? i probably could get here and find a statistics you wouldn't remember. what technique do you use in order to put all this together?

i want you to eventually get into how many romanovs there were. simon: writing these books is a huge challenge and is a nightmare. for some reason i have a taste for doing these. this is only about 4000 years. it is 20 or 21 romanov princes, czarina's, emperors. it covers so many years. you can imagine, every single monarch in this book has their children, their wives, their mistresses, they are great poets and composers. all of them have to be mastered. writing these books is one hell of a mental challenge i must say. i have to immerse myself in the subject for the few years i am doing it. i only read about this subject. obviously afterwards we can't

wait to read summit james elroy thrillers or something. i concentrateit, absolutely on it. i just work my way from the reign, andreign by when each we one i lead all the books on the subject first of all. i get all of the books and journals that have been published in russian. in then ultimately, i go to russia and walk around the palace and look at the archives and then i move on to the next monarch. journals. and then ultimately i go to russia and walk around the palaces, look at the archives, and then when i feel i've had enough, i move on the next, to the next monarch. brian: you were here last in 2004, and we also did an interview peter slim did in london. i want to put it up on the screen. the number of nonfiction books you've written.

catherine the great and potemkin. stalin. young stalin. jerusalem, the bible. say "roromanoff," you manov." simon: the russians say romano. but we english say romanov. it doesn't matter. brian: you mentioned the rothchild's. this is a 2008 "vanity fair" article that undoubtedly you remember in which a friend of yours the honorable hannah rothchild, who is she. simon: she's a novelist and writer. she's head of the british museum. the very important woman in england and she's a daughter of lord rothchild. he is a great person.

brian: here is her quote. did you find it to be a compliment? simon: i don't know. what did you think? i'm not sure you found that as a compliment. brian: are you a gossip? simon: i think all human affairs all human business, all politics is about human relationships. you can call that gossip, if you'd like. on the world's face. but if you look at these books for example, in all of them, there are sud dis and how power itself affects on penalty on power. even if you are talking about an imperial court with chamberlains and ladies in waiting or whether you're talking about the office of the president of the united states. elected officials. power works in a similar way. and it emanates from the person who has been elected who has the power.

whether it is barack obama or vladimir putin. and i'm a student of the way that works. and i am fascinated by the way that happens. so i'm hoping that this book -- you can read it as entertainment about a lot of shocking murders and the rest. you can look at it about how it works with russian today. a studyan look at it as of human nature and power. i just gave you one example. in 1981, when it was murder. when he was assassinated, reform really ended in russia 1917. in russian history. look at trump. look at, you know, look at the clintons. again and again, personalities are decisive in power and in politics. and so my books concentrate on

the personal. brian: who's your favorite personality? not your favorite leader, but the one you had the most fun researching? simon: well, peter the great is totally compelling. you know, he's a misunderstood character. i wanted to look at him in a political sense as well as a colorful character. brian: when was he emperor? simon: he was emperor until 1765 when he died. he was the emperor since he was a child. these people are breathtaking. look at the two greatest men in the book. peter the great, who was one and potemkin, who was probably catherine the great's partner. maybe her secret husband.

they work may be the most talented individuals in the whole romanov story. both of them died at 52. both of them utterly exhausted, by the way. what did they achieve? start with peter the great. why was he called peter at the great? simon: now, i am 50-years-old. that's a pretty terrible statistic. that was on my mind because think of all they achieved, and they both died at 52-years-old. he was called the great because he achieved so much. he modernized russia. he brought him more than technology, western experts. western forms of government. he mobilized it in hopes that they could defeat sweden. he founded st. petersburg, a new capital. he conquered the baltic fleet, and he created the fleet which made russia a naval path for the first time. and he did this all through the force of his personality.

and despite all of the national reasons and the wonderful swedish methods at court and the modern artillery he developed. the wonderful ships in the russian navy. despite all of this modern stuff, he was always basically an autocrat who ruled wherever he was. wherever he was was the government. he slept, the government slept. when he was drunk, the government was drunk. he was everything. he was the ultimate personal ruler of russia. he was a genius. but he was also a monster. he took part in the beheadings of his enemies. he tortured his own son to death. he -- you know, he was fascinated with the human body, dismantling it. i remember when he was in holland, he attended all of these medical dissections. he was fascinated with the dead bodies.

antique queued up and said, can i write it? he wanted to write a dead body. queued up and said, can i bite it? dead body.o bite a he wanted to feel how it felt in his teeth. he had his own collection of surgical tools. he brought his own collection of surgical tools on tours. if you had a bad foot to or a sore, and you were part of peter the great's entourage, you made sure you never mentioned it. brian: how many different emperors did you write about? simon: there are 20 that

actually ruled. but there are actually many regions, many field marshals. many characters, many authors. this book as everyone from chayefsky to pushkin to dostoyevsky. everyone to rasputin, probably the least talented. brian: let's talk about rasputin for a minute. you go into great detail in him. when did he first pop up in russian society? simon: it is interesting. too much emphasis on whether he is a healer or not. the hemophilia of the sun. son.e what is much more important is that to he represented what nicholas alexander felt was the authentic foundation of the romanov aristocracy, which was the relationship between the czar and the peasantry. brian: can you recognize who he has sitting with and who is standing behind him? simon: no, i do not recognize them but he is unmistakable, rasputin. brian: what was his relationship?

who was the first he had a relationship with? what was his relationship with nicolas the second's wife with nicolas to's wife? -- with nicholas ii's wife? all, there first of was no love affair as was ruler -- rumored. but alexandra and nicholas both absolutely needed rasputin. first of all was the healing of the hemophilia china. a tragic family story. they were agonized by this. why the child suffering. by his suffering as he almost died repeatedly from hemophiliac attacks. the stress they placed on themselves by insisting he must secede to the full plenitude of autocracy. so in this case was the stress on the child and themselves. brian: what year is nicholas -- simon: this is 1905, 1904 was when the child alexi was born.

they mean to rasputin in 1905, the next year. and he remains absolutely key to them right up until his murder in december, 1916. brian: i guess i did not ask right. nicholas ii was the emperor for how long? simon: over 20 years. 1894 to 1917. brian: the reason i wanted to talk about rasputin, this is the end of the romanovs. simon: we are starting at the and. you are askingng about rasputin because rasputin became essential will to parents as well as the child. but he didn't become totally politically important until world war i. and in world war 1, nicholas decided to become commander in chief. and he left the capital in the charge of the emperor alexander. -- of the empress alexandra. alexandra was an

extremely prudish woman. extremely self righteous, religious who believed absolutely in sacred autocracy as a system. net define a talker see. simon: that's the rule of romanov of a god-given ramonov. and when nicholas ii left, alexandra was back in petersburg. -- was incomplete command of command.n complete she found herself and in this preposterous nomination where she had complete contempt for politicians, particularly in journalists. she suddenly found herself in the business of politics. in so she had to turn, she, this self-righteous, prudish woman,

had to turn to someone. and that was rasputin, who only knew the most in competent, in competent -- people in st. petersburg. petrograd then. this book is based on correspondence. there are several thousand that letters at that time. apart from being fascinating because they are passionate about each other. they are very close. it also reveals how isolated they were. isolated by their own wishes, by the way. and how much they depended, to an absurd degree, on rasputin. when you read the letters, you realize just how unstable she was. she was close to being insane.

by justill be amazed at how unstable she was. she was sending things to nicholas like rasputin's brush and things like that. so he would be blessed and protect it. so you realize that the prestige and the power of the monarchy is seeping away fast when she's in charge. brian: who didn't like rasputin? simon: no one liked him except for the imperial family. the children, the four daughters and their son and the imperial couple. by the time world war i started in 1914, no one liked rasputin but people couldn't face the fact that there was a responsibility that belonged to the tsar and they blamed it on rasputin. they were sure that they would solve the problem if they killed rasputin. brian: how did they do it? if you go to st. petersburg -- and a lot of americans do, where would they find nicholas and

alexandra living at that time? and where did rasputin live? simon: nicholas and alexandra lived outside from petersburg. they hated the immoral debauchery. they live in the alexander palace. the palace built by saint -- by catherine the great for her grandson, alexander the first, these are of war and peace. we might come to him later. brian: where is the winter palace? simon: right in the center of saint petersburg. now, rasputin lived on a flat. when they came out to meet the czar or czarina, they would meet in a small cottage outside the city gates that no one know about it. it belonged to a friend of theirs. that little house is still there, by the way. and no one goes to see it but they should. because that's where russia was governed. it was just outside the gates. they would come out. it is all of the police and so

streetscontrolling the and they would make a record of anyone visiting. but anyway, they avoid anyone knowing but of course, everybody knew anyway. and meanwhile also in this city both for the use of the palace which i am sure many american tourists will visit, that has the room where rasputin was killed and the courtyard where he was killed. he was a cross-dressing, bisexual, opium addict. interesting character who had been at oxford university, of course. and him and his friend dimitri was a member of the imperial family, in fact. and they decided the only way to save russia and save the monarchy was to kill rasputin. they romanticized the killing of rasputin in a way that we all know. he was poisoned, he got up again. he was shot, he got up again. it was like a vampire movie.

they virtually claimed they stuck a stake in his heart and that finally killed him. but in fact, the murder was very different from that. there are interesting things about that. we know now there was some kind of british involvement. the british secret service were involved somehow. the early version of the mi six. they may have actually been involved in the a session nation. brian: why? simon: rasputin was against the war. that was true. that was about the only sensible things he did devise, was to stay out of the war. but that was a very difficult thing to do, to stay out of the war. nicholas the second was really strong enough to withstand the pressure to go to war. brian: which side was russia on? simon: the american side. the british were interested in him being killed. one was to keep russia in the war. the second was to save the monarchy. without they monarchy, russia

would in any case probably leave the war and many people believe the monarchy would be destroyed if rasputin continued his dark influence. so, somehow, british agents were use upon, involved in this plot. what really happened was they went into his house. they shot him once. the bullet did not kill him. he ran outside and somebody from behind fired at him and brought him down with a second shot that was not fatal. and this is the interesting bit. at this point, someone walked up with a huge pistol. like a clint eastwood styled magnum. they put it right against his point blank and blew him away. it was not this kind of romantic gothic story the way we see it in hollywood movies. it was more like a cold-blooded execution of a peasant.

brian: here's the famous picture of rasputin on the screen. what effect did this have? what exact year was he killed? simon: december 16. but you can see that. this is a great picture. they found the body underneath the ice in the river. they threw him under the ice. it took a while to find him. he is starring there before his autopsy. wing there before his autopsy. what is interesting is that he is in storage there before has a. you can see the point-blank shot in the middle of the forehead. you can see if they're pretty clearly. brian: what affected it have that they told him? simon, will come of the funny thing was instead of strengthening the monarchy exposed and emasculated the monarchy because nothing changed when rasputin died. nicholas ii was still the same

nicholas ii ruling with alexander the fourth. he did not start getting into a representative government. nothing changed. all it showed that the government was hollow and nicholas ii was a deeply incompetent ruler. brian: i'm at the end. nicholas and alexandra's assassination. the fact that the bolsheviks took over. i want you to lead us up to that and explain after this assassination of rasputin, when did the next step in this process take place? simon: it was in december of 1916. the monarchy literally lasted two months afterwards. the irony was, this was not a revolution led by lenin and stalin and trotsky. they were all in exile in siberia. in fact, lenin said just weeks before, the revolution would never happen, but here it came. it was totally unexpected yet easily predictable because people started to protest about food shortages in the capital and it quickly spread. the troops who were in the city

started to fraternize with the rebels. and nicholas was far away at the front. brian: where was he? simon: he was right at the front at the headquarters. it took him a long of time to get back. he was foolish to try to get back in a rush. his train got sidelined, supposedly stopped by workers and he found himself totally alone in a railway station in the middle of nowhere and he had to ask his generals what to do and his general said, as one, abdicate. and suddenly he was alone in his imperial carriage and had to sign in abdication. so he abdicated to the hemophiliac boy, now in his teens. then he spoke to a doctor in t said, is this hemophilia

curable? the doctor said, no. yes, how long can he live? the doctor said, he could live a long time or he could die at 30-years-old. and he said, you know what? i will change my plan. i will leave this to my brother, michael, and keep the child with me. brian: was that his decision? any emperor could say. simon: and that is very interesting. and he and modern history and if we look at putin, his success, the success in my government is a measure of its orderliness. of its authority, of its system, if you like. up until czar paul the first in 1796, and he czar could just appoint anyone they like as there's successor. so his successor was his wife, catherine the first. one of the most extraordinarily colorful female characters in this book. but she was little more than a camp follower. she first appears walking naked

as a prisoner in the russian camp. she was neither a russian norah russian, nor an nor russian, and yet peter the great married her and renamed her katharine. and crown to her empress of russia. when he died, she was crowned even though she had no claim on the throne. russia can make anyone in charge of that powerful autocracy. the irony is that nowadays, 1890's and in 2016, the presidents of the russia who are again autocrats, can't choose their own successors again. in a way that was unthinkable. in the 20th century, so you have vladimir putin. similarly, putin it chose someone who then chose him again. so we are in a situation in russia where all of the trappings of democracy once again, despite all the

trappings of democracy, the tsar can choose his own successor. brian: looking back at why, the whole revolution in 1917, what happened to the last romanovs? simon: terrible story. i don't take the romantic approach to nicholas and alexandra. the movie view. i don't take it. i differ from the traditional romantic approach. they were a couple who were in love with each other. they were a loving parents, but they were also rulers. i think that when people read in this book what they were really like, i think people will be amazed at how anti-semitic they were. the stuff about jews is pretty shocking. considering that they regarded as wonderful, romantic heroes.

nicolas and alexandra. bryan: it connects to you and your family. simon: we left at that time, my mother's family, to escape. nicholas and alexandra's kind of benedict the nurse and duplicity. -- vindictiveness and duplicity. i think people will be surprised when they read the book. that they may not recognize the nicholas and alexandra they knew. the family is only one part of it. i will say, when they were on the throne -- overthrown. in 1917, they did conducted themselves with immense grace. they behave with immense dignity. that is why they were made it two cents. at the same time, it is worth remembering, at the same time

nicolas the second, now deposed, was reading tolstoy and books to children in captivity, he was also reading his children -- the elder of zion. the rabidly anti-semitic forgery. that gives you some perspective. in the end, when the bolsheviks took power, lenin, stalin, trotsky, this was a totally new turn of events. suddenly, they were in danger of their lives. and, it was unthinkable that the children could be in danger of their lives. but lennon and trotsky and stalin were ruthless operatives and they could take no chances. it is clear, when you look at the orders to kill them all, including the children, came from the top, came from lenin. he was far too clever to leave a written order. he was very aware of history. when it came to kill them, to kill all of them, these four

gorgeous young daughters, the innocent son, as well as the parents, as well as the family doctor and the entourage, never has a murder been so bungled, never has a crime been more appalling or atrocious. they did it by sheer incompetence. brian: where were they? set the scene. simon: they were at the house. it had been renamed "to the ouse of special purpose." they were kept there. all the windows were painted white. the family was kept in total isolation. different members of their entourage were taken away and shot in the woods. gradually, they realized that something terrible was going to happen. yet, the white army was approaching and they could hear the guns at night. the order came from moscow that

if the whites got too near, they could wipe out the whole family. so this job was done. they were woken up at about 1:00 in the morning, came downstairs and put on their clothing, taken to a room, the cellar room. brian: they thought they were being moved. simon: they came down, the little boy sat down. he had recently had a hemophiliac attack. nicholas stood in front of the boy, seemingly protecting him. suddenly, these 12 ruffians came in with guns and bayonets and pistols and rifles and half of them were drunk. some of them were psychopaths who had murdered people before. one of them had beheaded a man in a bank robbery before the revolution. they came in and read the sentence of death. then they all started firing. it all went wrong immediately. everyone was supposed to kill one person. but of course, a lot of them were not comfortable shooting girls so they aimed at the person they were meant to shoot and then suddenly switched the

guns and shot nicholas ii in the chest. so, he was killed instantly. but everyone else was screaming and all of them were alive still. of then there was a sort free-four-all of shooting. killing some of them. but, tragically, all the girls in the children were wearing their own bizarre bulletproof vests, not bulletproof vests, but vests sewn with the romanoff diamines, hundreds and hundreds of them had been sewn into their vests and case they had to escape. said they had to buy their way out. sewing spent months these on. so they had billions of pounds on their body and they weighed an enormous amount. when the bullets came, these made their execution and agony much longer because the bullets bounced off diamonds, the hardest substance known to man.

and, they did not die. so then they had to go among the bodies, so much blood on the floor that it was slippery like an ice rink. they had to walk in and stabbed them and shoot them in the head. still, two of the girls, at the end of this, mayhem, half an hour, two of the girls were still coughing and had to be stabbed and shot all over again. i mean, writing it, i actually wept when i was writing this scene. it is agony. it is agony. brian: who reported on what happened? as i remember, you talk about being in a room with a dim lightbulb and you can't see each other and all that. who had the information? simon: the interesting thing was several of the assassins and murderers probably -- p

roudly wrote memoirs about what they had done. because the whole thing with such a debacle, it took literally three days and three nights without sleep to bury the bodies. what happened with the bodies afterwards, we should go into now, it involves sulfuric acid fire and being buried in different places and terrible things being done to the bodies of the girls especially. when they came to read the memoirs, they were so confused about what had happened in this sleepless three-day struggle to depose of the bodies that they contradicted themselves in different places. there are different versions of the story. all these were kept in the archives. brian: is this new information you found? simon: not all of it, no. there are new aspects of it, but the story is to going on, which is very interesting. as everyone knows, the bodies were found in the 1990's and buried in 1998.

with boris yeltsin presiding. they were buried in the family vault, but two of the bodies were missing. not anastasia, she did not survive. the grand duchess maria and her sister their bodies were never found. 10 years later, 2007, very recently, they found the remains of those bodies. just bits of skeleton. they were tested by western specialists and found to be the missing romanovs, but the orthodox church, backed by the president of the russian federation, because in russia the orthodox church is a branch of the autocracy, challenged these findings. last year, we're up-to-date now, last year, president putin and his security agencies and the church suddenly decided they would test everything again. they have exhumed nicholas ii,

temporarily, tested his body, exhumed the children, and they tested these two last bodies. at the time we are speaking, nothing has been announced jet. it think this has something to do with putin's view of history. putin's preparation for the centennial coming up next year and after. something is up with this. i don't know what it is. we are right there now. the romanovs, and some sense this story is happening right now as we speak in russia. something is about to happen and it reflects president putin's view of history. his view of history is very interesting. he's without ideology. he regards the two worst tsars of russia as gorbachev and nicholas ii. for example. one is a soviet leader, the other is a romanoff's are.

in a disaster for russia and he regards stalin a successful statesman. teetered the great, potemkin, alexandra as great. but he regards peter the second as a useless betrayer of the country. he regards gorbachev, our great hero, such an impressive liberal modernizer, he regards him as a failure, too. he judged them by their success. he sees himself, president putin, as a russian leader. a russian leader of the russian world, to be judged with the great rulers of russian history. brian: comment about anti-semitism and your own family and all that. i think i read in your book, lenin and trotsky who were on either side of stalin were jewish? simon: lenin was not jewish.

brian: not at all? no jewish? simon: some jewish. a 16th jewish. he was also part tartar. stalin was -- brian: throughout the book, there's a lot of anti-semitism. what is the basis of that? brian: this is the strange thing. the romanovs net anti-semitism become a family fetish that made no sense to them whatsoever. this goes with the wider crisis in the monarchy that they had, which was that they could not quite decide if they wanted to be emperor of this huge multinational multi-religion empire with all these different religions or if they wanted to be russian tsars, nationalistic tsars. this was one of the contradictions that they cannot

quite work out. in the end, from nicholas the first onward, they basically plumped for being nationalistic russian rulers and they gradually and foolishly alienated all the minorities. none more so than the georgians, poles, jews. which is why so many of those peoples became bolsheviks and revolutionaries and terrorists. they did it, it was a completely absurd concept. they regarded the jews, nicholas ii regarded the english and the jews were the same. they believed in a all of the things that's were wrong with the modern world. newspapers, the stock exchange, democracy, everything that nicholas ii hated.

he regularly talked about, someone said to him, what is a newspaper? what do you think happens in a newspaper? and he said, a newspaper is a bunch of jews trying to go to war with each other. it is a great thing when he goes to stay with his cousins. and alexander the seventh was incredibly pro-jewish. he was friends with the rothschilds and all these others. he had one of these big jewish tycoons staying there, the wealthiest man in europe at the time. he deliberately asked him to try and introduce into nicholas ii to make a more pro-jewish. nicholas ii was horrified. he wrote to his mother, they have a lot of jewish horsedealer staying here. i'm so horrified that i think i am not going to say a word the whole weekend. and that is what he did. brian: i want to put a list of your books on the screen. of all those books, which one so the best? brian: i think stalin and the

court of the red tsar. brian: from your standpoint, what is the thread through all of these books. simon: the thread it is simple. these are born i have longed to write. i wanted to produce what's on the subjects that were based on scholarship, the archives, and were readable by everybody. accessible. brian: if we saw you in an archive, where would that archive be physically? simon: it would be either in a former palace in moscow or in the soviet archives, a 1920's building in moscow. or i might be walking around a palace try to work out which rooms they lived in, or if it was jerusalem, i might be walking around the city, going down the tunnels, trying to

understand how different it layers of the city were built on top of each other. brian: last time, we were talking about the archives. there are some inference that the archives would be closed. what happened from 2004 until now? brian: there has been a huge tightening of access to the archives. it is much harder to work on them now, especially the modern ones. i mean, they don't care so much about the romanovs archives, but the stalin archives and any political archives, if they are not open, they will not open now. there is a real dark atmosphere in russia at the moment as part of an anti-western, xenophobic atmosphere. getting to the archives was never easy. i remembered the first time i started working on catherine the great, the archivist determined i would not find anything. i was looking at the documents

the first time, the archivist who tried to stop me went upstairs and lent over the paper in there was a squealing sound and something landed on my head and it was a kitten. i look up at the archivist. she was leaning over and waved at me to let me know i was not welcomed. brian: how long did you spend? simon: i spent months over there in those archives. also, walking around places is hugely important. so often, when i was writing about catherine the great, the potemkin villages. villages that are fake that have dev or been built. book after book said he never built anything. when i went down south, to two crimea, to sebastopol, to

ukraine and so on i found many of these places had been built by him and are still there. brian: we talked about you had been to all 15 homes of stalin? have you been to all of the homes of the romanovs? simon: pretty much. brian: how many? simon: there are at least 15 palaces, maybe more. so many of them. i'm open to every single one. there are thousands of them. probably. if you include all of the hunting lodges fall -- hunting lodges, probably up to 100 residences. brian: would people let you in? simon: yeah. brian: did you have a translator with you or can you speak good russian? simon: my russian is a work in progress. but without it, you could not do any of these work. but, you can get into all these places. as for the letters themselves, some of them are in russian, but many of them are in english. one thing that may surprise people is that, everyone hated alexandra as the german, but

actually she was english. she was brought up by queen victoria. she wrote her letters, the love letters between nicholas and alexandra are all in english. broken english, but english. brian: time is running out. this has nothing to do with these books, but it does have to do with you. i want to show your wife who has written how many novels now? simon: at least 15. brian: you live in kensington and london. you have high social presence there. simon: we work a lot. we have just written our first book together, a children's book. it is coming out in october. brian: let me show you the better half. simon: she is a lot better looking than i am a i will tell you. [video clip]

>> i live in london here. this is my garden in kensington. i live with my husband and my two children. i always wanted to write. as a child, i wrote books for children of friends and parents. then when i got to school, i started writing short stories for my girlfriends. a friend of my mother once read one who chose a writer and said you should really try get something published. i wrote one. by return of post it was sent back to me, rejected, of course. that was the start of another projection. i put them in a bottom drawer and continued. [end of video] brian: have you ever seen that? simon: no, i have never seen that. she's talking about all her lovely books she has written and she is leaning on stalin's complete works. just behind her, if you look carefully. brian: how long have you been married?

simon: a long time. we were married in 1998. originally, we worked at the same table. when we started writing, we did not have any hope that we would be successful, so we had a very small apartment. not in kensington. we had one table which was a dining room table. we worked on different sides of it and we spent our whole time arguing about what kind of music to listen to. she wanted to celine dion all the time, which i cannot tolerate. i wanted to listen to guns and roses or david bowie or pitbull or loud, driving music which help me keep up my narrative in these long books. we argued a lot about music, mainly about music, now we have our own offices. she can listen to all the celine dion she likes. brian: as you know, we have not even begun to talk about this book. there's so much more in here. there is one thing that i wanted to bring up because it stupefied me as i was reading it, the

dwarves. tell us how often did these emperors, i don't know which you would call it, play with the dwarves. brian: a lot of reviewers have said that this book makes the game of thrones look like a tea party. that's what one of them said in the "financial times." they were key. they signified the exceptionalism, the sanctity of the tsar. themwanted people around crippled, freaks, fools, and dwarfs. they were often their favorite people. peter the great love to have these weddings he had giant. weddings. the empress anna was a cruel,

horrible, vindictive woman. she had an entourage of women who were lacking limbs. one was called the legless one. one was called the armless one. she also had fools. she made princes into fools. then she had another fool who she said to get married. so he was invited to the house where he was with a goat. she loved that. all, she loved dwarf tossing and where they had fights where they pulled each other's hair. if they refuse, they were beaten. if they did what she said, she would spoil them with new clothing, food, and big cash gifts. some became incredibly rich. it was an extraordinary story. this is an amazing family story. dwarves are tossed, the empire is increased, great love affairs, but also where fathers

where wives sons, have their husbands overthrown and murdered, sons collude to murder their fathers. brian: how many of the 20 romanovs were assassinated or killed? simon: of the last 12, 6 were murdered violently or assassinated. i will give you an idea. for the late 18th century onward, half of them were killed. one of the themes of the book is that russia is a very hard country to rule and being a tsar is a hard thing to be. brian: should president putin be called tsar putin? simon: people say if, powerful russians laugh about this very question. for him, wealth is irrelevant. he is the tsar. everything belongs to him.

brian: who tried the most to get a democracy over there? simon: i think alexander the second is the most sympathetic of the family. brian: how about modern day? simon: boris yeltsin is a hugely underrated character. he was flawed, great but flawed. he was a drunk. he went to war in chechnya and terrible things were done there. he opened up russia. he tried to check abuses. he opened up history. he brought in democracy. brian: you say he brought in putin. what did he think putin would do? simon: this is the succession thing. it is impossible for an autocrat to retire without being murdered. in our own period, it is impossible for a president to retire without agreement that he

and his entire entourage and family will not be prosecuted for either war crimes or the vast corruption. that means, in effect, it is virtually impossible for any president to retire. that is why when yeltsin retired, he made a deal with his successor and that is why putin can never really retire. he was asked if he would ever give up, retire. and he said he would never retire. i will never be like gorbachev and nicholas ii and leave the country to chaos, scum, hooligans. he said they were weak. they were betrayers. i will never advocate. brian: viewers can find another three hours of you talking about stalin and jerusalem and other things, and this book, the romanovs, new this year. what is next? simon: i have written two novels set in russia. they are love stories and

thrillers. i'm just writing the third of the trilogy. brian: next nonfiction book? simon: i am not sure about that. i'm signed up to write a history of the world, which could be a step too far. that is in the distant future. brian: what do you do when you are not writing and researching? simon: i spent time with my -- i spend time with my wife. i love you showing me that video. it has picked me up enormously on this exhausting nine city tour. brian: how old are your two kids now? simon: my kids are now 15 and 13. brian: are either one interested in writing? simon: yeah, they are both quite good at writing. i don't want to pressure them. to make a living as a writer is a very hard thing. not many people get to do it. i don't want to force them into doing it. it must be funny for them. we are both writers. and as you can see, she is a delightful person to live with. brian: our guest has been simon sebag montefiore. his family is in this book on

page 372, "the romanovs." 1613-1918. and we thank you very much for joining us. simon: lovely to be here. thank you for having me. ♪ announcer: for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. programs are also available as c-span podcasts. ♪ announcer: if you liked this interview, here's some others

you might enjoy. margaret mcmillan on her book, the boy that ended peace. about francis ferdinand. robert service on his eye on griffey of leon trotsky, the russian revolutionary who was the leader of the october revolution. -- in appelbaum on totality totalitarianism. atd these programs online c-span.org. >> here on c-span, washington journal is next. at 10:00 we take you to the u.s. institute of peace where the dalai lama is scheduled to speak. at noon, the house gavels in with legislative and general speeches. at 2:00 p.m., the freedom of information act and another that would combat the trafficking of human organs.

next three hours, we give you a chance to share your thoughts on thewe will give youn the investigation. "washington journal." --"washington journal," is next. the flag over the u.s. capitol is at half staff this morning, along with flags across the country as the nation mourns the victims of an early morning a florida gayy at club that left 50 people dead and 53 more injured. attacked by u.s. man who reportedly pledged allegiance to the islamic state, it goes down as the worst mass shooting in u.s. history. we will spend all three hours of the program today getting your reaction to the tragedy of the pulse nightclub innovative. a special line for lando residence, -- orlando