Antony Beevor regaled the lunch with delicious tales from his new book, Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs.
From an obscure background in Siberia, Rasputin graduated to enchanting the Tsar’s court. Beevor recalled, ‘Grand ladies took to taking his fingernail clippings and sewing them into their dresses.’
And Rasputin ‘took an increasingly peculiar approach to handling lady supplicants – involving everything from blackmail to rape’.
No, Rasputin did not have an affair with the Tsarina. But rumours of his intimacy were so rife that when the Russian Revolution began in 1917, few leapt to defend the disgraced royal family. Rasputin, killed in 1916, was instrumental in bringing down the biggest autocracy in the world.
