This is Inside the New York Times Book Review. I'm Pamela Paul.

Empire, madness, romance, and of course a very tragic end. Simon Seabag Montefiori is here to talk about his new book, The Romanov's 1613-1918.

The great thing about doing all of them is really a way to show Russian continuity.

You know, how do we get to Russia today? Why Putin? Why Syria? Why Ukraine? Why does Russia have a no-talk-recy today?

Who doesn't like a good read aloud? We'll talk about new audio versions of two beloved children's classics, Alice in Wonderland and Grims Fairy Tales.

With fairy tales, the more sort of subdued that narrator is, I think actually the more effective they are as audio recordings.

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When you think about the Romanov's chances are you think of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and of course Nicholas and his entire family being executed by the Bolsheviks.

The Romanov's ruled Russia for 300 years. Simon Seabag Montefiori, biographer Stalin and Catherine the Great, has written extensively about Russia and is here to talk about his history of Russia's most famous Imperial family.

Simon, great to have you.

Lovely to have you. So you've written a book already about one of the Romanov's about Catherine the Great and Potemkin.

And of course, the subtitle of your Stalin biography was the Court of the Red Zare. How did you decide to do all of the Romanov's together?

I mean, this is 24 Zars and Zarenas and I'm probably forgetting a few people in there. Why do all of them?

We know some of them very well as kind of almost historical brand names like Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra.

But we know them in isolation. They've all entered that elevated level of being almost media icons, almost Hollywood legends.

And in fact, the view of all of even those well-known ones I think is wrong. And in the book you'll see fresh and then different analysis of them.

And it is very different from the sort of the cliché, the romance, the legend. But the great thing about doing all of them, even the lesser known ones, is really a way to show Russian continuity.

And that's one of the big themes of this book is, you know, how do we get to Russia today? Why Putin? Why Syria? Why Ukraine? Why does Russia have an autocracy today? Why the Russian people still yearn for a sort of imperial greatness?

All these things are altered in this book and can only be answered by showing how Russia develops. And doing it through the monarchs, especially in an autocratic one-man rule system, is a very good way of showing how things develop.

What are the family characteristics if there are any? The answer is not a cliché. They are larger than life. And the reason why it's not a cliché is because they were literally a sort of family of giants much of the period.

I mean, Peter the Great and his father, Zaryl Axi, were both over six foot tall. Peter the Great was almost six foot seven. So he was literally a giant of say larger than life, flamboyant, brutal, cruel, brilliant, visionary, half monster, half genius.

His father was very similar and then you get the 19th century monarchs, you know, from Alexander the First, Nicholas the First, Alexander the Second, Alexander the Third.

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