A vivid and well-researched novel about Grand Duke Michael who briefly reigned as the last Tsar of Russia. Fully illustrated to show the assets used and resumé of important political and armed forces leaders of time.
No other books have taken a slice of Russian history and reinterpreted it to reveal a hidden story; one of survival against the odds and adventures that extend from Russia to the UK, Denmark and Estonia.. In The Two Lives of Grand Duke Michael, numerous historical high-ranking figures are set within an audacious plot in a ‘what if’ drama against the backdrop of the First World War and which could have changed 20th Century history.
The allies plan to invade Russia, destroy the Bolshevik Revolution and bring back Russia to war with Germany on the eastern front. Lured by the idea of becoming the Tsar of the reinstated Imperial Rule, Michael is swayed by Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill to bring him out of Bolshevik Russia to the UK. The purpose is to agree terms and incorporate Michael’s ‘Prometheus Accord’ for political renewal and freedom in Russia. The ensuing two-week journey provides high adventure and gripping entertainment as he journeys in exotic cars, battleships, sea planes and secret German submarines, and with the additional intent of secreting a multi-million pound hoard of Romanov treasures on the Yorkshire coast in the UK. It comes to a halting stop when, as history tells us, the Grand Duke Michael’s attempts to defeat the emergence of Bolshevism is thwarted, and he is assassinated whilst under house arrest in Siberia.
Here the story is set for the author’s imagined second chapter for Grand Duke Michael. He carefully crafts, in detail, the revelation of his survival. How he is helped by Sidney Reilly of MI6, and his second life in the UK under a new identity and care of the British Secret Service whilst working at Bletchley Park in World War Two.