Andrew Cook (1)

A good, reasonably researched and readable and fairly even handed look at the the last few weeks of the Romanov family. Intriguing, brutal in places and fascinating. This looked at how a gilded cage was replaced by a communist one and how the royal family almost sleepwalked into their fate. The sections on British intelligences failed attempt to rescue them was also fascinating.

I found this book a bit disappointing. While it purports to be a biography of the first M in the secret services, William Melville, he didn't feature hardly for much of the book, coming across, appropriately enough, as a shadowy figure. We learn about his humble background in Ireland and his moving to England, his early career as a bobby on the beat in South London arresting burglars and embezzlers, then his rise as a senior detective until his ostensible retirement in 1903 when he became show more involved in secret work, retiring from that in 1917 from ill health, and dying soon afterwards.

This is really much more a history of late 19th century policing, an era of great change, and of security threats in the 1870s to 1900s, the initial period dominated by Fenians and anarchists, then later by German spies, though most of these were rather pathetic figures and much of the spy fever was imaginary. What struck me was how contemporary some of this felt: bombs on the London underground in 1883 and the debates in Parliament, the press and society about acceptable boundaries between curtailing liberties and guaranteeing security. show less

I found this book interesting, in no small measure because I've read a number of books on Jack the Ripper theories, many of which implicated Prince Albert Victor (to one or more degrees of ludicrousness). This book tries, and I think succeeds, to be a sober analysis of the prince's life based on what is known. To that extent, I think the book comes off as credible.

The two most fascinating things about this otherwise forgettable prince were the rumors about him being Jack the Ripper and the Cleveland Street scandal. Granted, the Ripper story is a bit of a stretch and can be relatively easily disproved by the dates Eddy was out of town, but the author neglected to even cover the basic storyline, dismissing it out of hand.

The Cleveland Street scandal is a bit more problematic. There's no direct evidence, but Eddy did keep company with Stevens, Wilde and show more others. It's a more likely scenario. However, the author acts incredibly uncomfortable with the subject in general and positively cringes at the specifics. He barely mentions Stevens. His only mention of Bosie calls him a happily married man.

Overall, I got the impression that the author would have rather been writing about one of the other primaries in the book. Chapters about Eddy include large amounts of information on George, Bertie, and Alix, so much so that the reader sometimes forgets who is being profiled. show less