Catherine the Great and Potemkin

The Imperial Love Affair

Simon Sebag Montefiore

History's greatest love story, Catherine the Great and Potemkin is a sweeping epic of sex, love, power, conquest and extravagance on a magnificent Russian scale. Not only was only was their romance wildly passionate but they were also probably the most successful political partnership of all, outstripping Antony and Cleopatra or Napoleon and Josephine.
Their secret letters, which discuss other lovers, sex, wars, politics, arts and health, are surely the most intimate and extraordinary ever written by an empress or politician. Both characters in this joint biography, based on new archives, are extraordinary: she a German princess married lovelessly at 14 to the Russian heir combined charm, passion and political genius. She ruthlessly seized power and ruled triumphantly for thirty years; he - a brilliant flamboyant politician, strategist and conqueror of wild eccentricity and debauchery. Outrageously sexual and political, he was the love of her life. They shocked Europe by taking younger lovers yet they secretly married and ruled together as best friends, and lifelong lovers.