Digging for the truth of Russia's tragic dynasty

THE regicide of Nicholas II and his family in a remote Siberian town by Bolsheviks smelling defeat at the hands of their opponents has been the stuff of legend for more than 70 years.

Crowded into a small cellar, the major remaining representatives of the Romanov dynasty were lined up in photographic formation and sprayed with bullets. Those who failed to die immediately were finished off with a bullet to the brain. Or that is how thestory goes.

Using archive material made available by the collapse of communism and people's willingness to talk in post-coup Russia, Edvard Radzinsky, historian and playwright, comes as close as anyone to discovering the truth about those final, fateful hours in TheLast Tsar - The Life and Death of Nicholas II.

What better primary sources to prepare the ground for the denouement than the diaries of the Tsar and his German wife? These remarkable documents trace their lives from the glorious days of absolute power, unabated luxury and glittering pageantry to humiliating house arrest and execution via an abdication and a couple of revolutions.

These he augments with contemporary accounts, previously unpublished letters, reminiscences of observers and participants, and declassified files previously suppressed by a party bureaucracy obsessed with the re-interpretation of history to suit their view of the world.

It adds up to a breathtaking account of political intrigue and cynical duplicity, impressive even by the standards of a country constantly bedeviled by monumental upheavals and social malaise.