The Fall of the Romanovs, by Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir M. Khrustalev (Yale University Press, £19.95 in UK)

The murder (there is no other name for it) of Czar Nicholas, his wife and family has been written about to - literally - death, but this is not the usual web of fact, supposition and mystification which has filled out so many paperback accounts. It is strictly factual and historical, drawing on many eyewitness accounts and even bringing in the diary entries by the doomed Romanovs themselves. Some of the latter are almost unbearably poignant, and all the more so because of their very banality and ordinariness. In spite of their narrow, antiquated outlook, their snobbishness and sheer stupidity, the Czar and his family never deserved their savage, revolting end, which remains as a large black blot on Russia's troubled history. B.F.