Lost Splendor: The Amazing Memoirs of the Man Who Killed Rasputin

Prince Felix Youssoupoff Ann Green & Nicholas Katkoff (translators)

Born to great riches, lord of vast feudal estates and many palaces, Felix Youssoupoff lead the life of a Grand Lord in the days before the Russian Revolution. Married to a niece of Czar Nicholas II, he could observe at close range the rampant corruption and intrigues of the imperial court, witch culminated in the rise to power of the sinister monk Rasputin. Finally, impelled by patriotism and his love for the Romanoff dynasty, which he felt was in danger of destroying itself and Russia, he killed Rasputin in 1916 with the help of the Grand Duke Dimitri and others. More than any other single event, this deed helped to bring about the cataclysmic upheaval which ended in the advent of the Soviet regime. Here is an unforgettable true story of intrigue, murder and revenge.

• “Prince Youssoupoff... is perfectly objective, remarkably modest, and as accurate as human fallibility allows. His book is a therefore readable, of historical value, and intimately tragic. It is as if Count Fersen had written a detailed account of the last years of Marie Antoinette.” —Harold Nicholson in the Observer, London