Simon Montefiore's ancestors escaped from the Tsarist Empire at the turn of the century and sparked his lifelong interest in Russia. As a correspondent in the early 1990s, he covered the wars and turbulence of the fall of the Soviet Union - from Georgia and Chechnya to Moscow and St Petersburg.

As a historian, he has spent the last ten years researching the Russian archives. The personal stories he found there and his interviews with families continue to inspire his fiction and non-fiction. Born in 1965, Simon Montefiore lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore and their two children. For further details about the author and his books.