Andrew Williams - To Kill a Tsar

The former British embassy in St Petersburg is now an academic institute, but some of the rooms remain, including its extraordinary White Ballroom. The British ambassador’s wife, Lady Dufferin, kept a gossipy journal of her life in the city between 1879 and 1881, and I have drawn on this for much fine detail (Harriot Georgina Blackwood: My Russian and Turkish Journals ). For the serious day-to-day business of the embassy I consulted the telegrams and ambassador’s reports at the National Archive in London. Diplomatic Reminiscences , the memoirs of Lord Augustus Loftus, British ambassador to Russia (1871–9) were also a useful source. A third secretary, Lord Frederic Hamilton, wrote a lighthearted memoir of embassy life at this time, The Days Before Yesterday , in which he describes the theatricals he organised for Lord Dufferin. He was also a witness to the execution of the regicides. The Foreign Office Diplomatic List provided me with the names and backgrounds of key embassy staff including the military attaché, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Gonne. Gonne’s daughter, Maud, was the English-born Irish revolutionary whom the poet William Butler Yeats loved recklessly, and who inspired some of his finest work including ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’, the lines I quote at the beginning of this book.

For ordinary Russian life in St Petersburg, its geography and history, I consulted many written sources. Particularly useful for the geography of the city were Baedeker’s Russia 1914 and the online Encyclopedia of St Petersburg ( www.encspb.ru/en). Although many of the city’s buildings are much as they were in 1879, the Soviet era left its mark and some of the churches mentioned in the story have gone. St Boris and St Gleb Church was closed in 1934 and demolished in 1975. The names of some streets and prominent buildings were changed after the revolution. I have used anglicised spellings of the 1880 Russian names for streets and all but a few well-known buildings and districts such as the Winter Palace and the Haymarket, which are rendered in English. Of course, nowhere is the colour of St Petersburg at this time captured better than in the pages of Dostoevsky. One of his neighbours in the apartment building where he lived on Kuznechny Lane in 1880 was an important member of The People’s Will. Dates quoted are according to the Julian Calendar then in use in the Russian Empire.

The historian Dr Sergei Podbolotov of the European University of St Petersburg was my guide to the city. I am grateful to him for his hospitality, good humour and the patience he showed in answering my many questions about nineteenth-century Russian customs and society. I discussed my idea for a book on The People’s Will with my friend Kate Rea who also helped me with the initial research. I owe a great debt of gratitude to family and friends for their support and enthusiasm when for one reason or another mine began to falter. My agent, Julian Alexander, provided helpful advice on the story outline, so too my editor at John Murray, Kate Parkin, whose judgement and criticism were invaluable in helping me to shape the narrative. Caroline Westmore of Murrays eased its passage to publication. Responsibility for omissions — deliberate or not — and any mistakes there may be rests with me alone. I have taken liberties with the history but endeavoured to do justice to the spirit of the place and the times.

The Interrogator

The Battle of the Atlantic

D-Day to Berlin

After studying English at Oxford, Andrew Williams worked as a senior producer for the BBC’s Panorama and Newsnight programmes, then wrote and directed history documentaries. He is the author of two bestselling non-fiction books, The Battle of the Atlantic and D-Day to Berlin . His acclaimed first novel, The Interrogator , is also published by John Murray.

‘Williams contrives an appealing blend of Doctor Zhivago, Conrad’s Under Western Eyes and Boris Akunin’s 19th-century crime fiction. His ability to bring a past world to life matches Furst’s.’

‘This is a dense, meaty affair which pulls off the trick of gripping the reader and bringing a complicated, alien world to life.’

‘He blends historical fact and fiction in a vivid recreation of the world of The Idiot and Crime and Punishment .’

‘Elegantly serpentine plotting and finely etched characters confirm his place in the front rank of the new English thriller writers.’

‘A very accomplished novel which can be enjoyed as a gripping and moving thriller. Yet it is more than that, for it invites us to reflect on questions of morality, and on that age-old question of when, if ever, violent means may be held to justify worthy ends; whether, indeed, such ends can ever be achieved if the means are inescapably criminal.’

‘Exciting … an important book for devotees of the spy story.’

‘A gripping thriller set in a world of treachery.’

‘ To Kill a Tsar … had me biting my fingernails with the suspense.’

‘Bravura story-telling … Andrew Williams is the real thing; a writer who can marry popular genres to the sophisticated treatments of political arguments.’

‘Williams has done his homework and each setting rings true … a well-constructed period thriller … you will get caught up in conspiracy and counter-plot.’

‘Sheer escapism … To Kill a Tsar is a bold portrait of revolutionaries seeking to assassinate Tsar Alexander II in St Petersburg … gripping authenticity.’

‘Authentic, moving, though-provoking, gripping … as good as historical thrillers get. Don’t miss it.’

‘I was totally absorbed in this very gripping, sensational historical mystery, with a factual basis and with the nail-biting tension of whether the protagonists will be arrested or not. This is only the author’s second novel and yet it was shortlisted for both the Walter Scott Prize and the CWA Ellis Peters Award. The depth of research that the author undertook with this book is to be applauded. I was completely captivated by the very tightly plotted depth of this story which I think is the best historical romantic mystery that I have had the pleasure of reading this year. I hope to include it in my top five books of 2011. If you enjoy a marvellously evocative historical mystery then this is the next one to buy if you have not done so already.’

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by John Murray (Publishers)

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© Andrew Williams 2100

The right of Andrew Williams to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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All characters in this publication — other than the obvious historical figures — are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.