Catherine the Great and Potemkin ─ The Imperial Love Affair

It was history's most successful political partnership--as sensual and fiery as it was creative and visionary. Catherine the Great was a woman of notorious passion and imperial ambition. Prince Potemkin--wildly flamboyant and sublimely talented--was the love of her life and her co-ruler.

Together they seized Ukraine and Crimea, territories that still help define the Russia of today. Their affair was so tumultuous that they negotiated an arrangement to share power, leaving each of them free to take younger lovers. But these "twin souls" never stopped loving each other.

Drawing on the pair's intimate letters and on vast research, Simon Sebag Montefiore's widely acclaimed biography restores these imperial partners to their rightful place as titans of their age.

Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian of Russia and the Middle East.? Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Partner (original title) was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards. Young Stalin won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, the Costa Biography Award, and le Grande Prix de la biographie politique.? Jerusalem: The Biography was a worldwide best seller. Montefiore's books are published in more than forty languages. He is the author of the novels Sashenka and One Night in Winter, which won the Paddy Power Political Fiction Book of the Year Award in 2014. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Dr. Montefiore graduated from Cambridge University, where he received his PhD. He lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children.?For more details, visit:?www.simonsebagmontefiore.com