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“... documents from the very end of the tsarist period which tells the story of Nicholas’s last days. Robert Massie’s The Romanovs: The Final Chapter tells what happened to the Romanovs after they died. Massie’s book is a movie, big on atmosphere and set pieces, while Steinberg and Khrustalev’s book is a book, as ...”

“... all the view happens to include. What matters is the truthfulness of what it does show, and Allan Massie is strikingly detached and truthful, leaving it to the reader to observe and judge. Not that this means that in a literal sense he tells the truth about the Scottish landed classes. His subject is a way of life with very little sustenance in it, and the ...”

“... deal with bed-wetting, a sad problem for sufferers and not much fun to read about. However, Allan Massie’s novel about Caesar Augustus may attract attention, if only for its grand ambition. The first Roman Emperor was only 18 when he began to take over the world and he was nearly eighty when he crowned his brilliant career by becoming a god. Allan ...”

“... into invasion and battle by the requirements of more powerful states. Flodden left what Alex Massie described in the Scotsman as a ‘shrivelled, enfeebled Scotland’. What had been a confident, cultured and stable kingdom was dogged by ‘a century of instability’. Subsequent generations of Scots showed an understandable reluctance to embark on war ...”