Hello friends, welcome. So excited that you're here. Today we are talking with somebody who is one of the world's experts on the Romanov family.

People are adornly fascinated by the last royal family of Russia, talking about Zarnicolis the second, his wife Alexandra, the mythology of anesthesia.

And of course they're related to all kinds of other European royalty. Their murder has been the stuff of legend.

So let's dive into my conversation with author and historian Helen Rapp report. I'm Sharon McMahon. And here's where it gets interesting.

I'm really excited to be chatting with you because I have been fascinated by Russian history for most of my adolescents in adult life.

I'm sure you hear that from people all the time and I bet you shared the same fascination. Otherwise you would not have made such an extensive career of writing about the Romanov family.

Yes, I was caught up with Russia and the Russian language and the literature and the music at that very kind of mid-teen period when one is very impressionable and hungry for knowledge and discovery.

And really I fell in love with the Russians when I was about 15. That was long before I discovered the Romanov's I have to say because my initial passion was for Anton Chekhov, the short story writer.

And when I watched all those Russian films I used to show on the TV and I then studied Russian I was very lucky because I went to a girls grammar school in England where I had the chance to learn Russian.

And then I went on to do Russian at university but I came to the Romanov's very late in my life as such.

Did you? What about them? Is so fascinating to you and to audiences because there is undoubtedly an enduring fascination with them. What about it is so interesting.

Well, it's funny to say that I think as a historian I actually avoided them because I felt that there was too much bling and chins and sentiments and the whole story become inflated with a lot of mythology.

You know, they've been dominated for so many decades by the Spurious Anastasia claim and then there's all the endless demonization of us boot in and all the the nonsense written about him.

And I felt that the subject had been infected with a lot of mythology and misinformation and quite honestly didn't want to go near it. So when I first started writing I hadn't thought particularly of doing the Romanov's and it would came from an agent I was with at the time, a literary agent.

And I just done a book on women in the Crimean War and we were sitting in his office sort of mulling over what I should write next and he said, well, look, why don't you do the Romanov's, you're a Russianist, you're a Russian speaker and I went and I can remember my reaction.

I'll know all those palaces and blame mental staff and Anastasia and I really didn't fancy it. I really was kind of put off by all the the schmolts associated with the story, but he was insistent he said, look, go away and take a look at them.

And I said, well, I don't want to do a big biography of say Nicholas or Alexander, I wasn't interested in that because as a history and what really fascinates me aspects of the story that are less or known, you know, going into the footnotes looking behind the scenes.

So he gave me the key and I shall always be grateful to this agent. He said to me, think of the timeline, you don't have to do a whole life. And this is a principle I've kept to with many other books, he said, go away and look at a part of the story.

So what I did in fact was looked at the last two weeks of their lives in the build up to their horrific murders at the Apache house in Yucatarinburg. And I suddenly realized very, very quickly and maybe it comes from having once been an actress a long, long time ago.

But when I looked to the last two weeks of their lives, I could see a scenario, I could see a story developing and how you could build attention, these people trapped in this awful house, unable to get away, everyone wants to kill them, other people want to rescue them.

And in the end, I wrote last days of the Rommelosses, it was known in America about the last two weeks of their lives, it building up to that horrible murder. And after I done that, I thought, well, that's fine, I've written a story, I've satisfied myself that I've given the Rommelosses ago.

I kept niggling at me, I kept thinking about those four girls and how really when you look at any book written about the Rommeloss, they're always the set dressing, they're always in the background, the pretty girls in white, rocks, who all look interchangeable and rather demure and sweet.

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