George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I - Miranda Carter Audiobook

Written by Miranda Carter
Read by Rosalyn Landor
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: March 23, 2010
Duration: 21:09:48

In the years before the First World War, the great European powers were ruled by three first cousins: King George V of Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Together, they presided over the last years of dynastic Europe and the outbreak of the most destructive war the world had ever seen, a war that set twentieth-century Europe on course to be the most violent continent in the history of the world.

Miranda Carter uses the cousins’ correspondence and a host of historical sources to tell the tragicomic story of a tiny, glittering, solipsistic world that was often preposterously out of kilter with its times, struggling to stay in command of politics and world events as history overtook it.

George, Nicholas and Wilhelm is a brilliant and sometimes darkly hilarious portrait of these men—damaged, egotistical Wilhelm; quiet, stubborn Nicholas; and anxious, dutiful George—and their lives, foibles and obsessions, from tantrums to uniforms to stamp collecting. It is also alive with fresh, subtle portraits of other familiar figures: Queen Victoria—grandmother to two of them, grandmother-in-law to the third—whose conservatism and bullying obsession with family left a dangerous legacy; and Edward VII, the playboy “arch-vulgarian” who turned out to have a remarkable gift for international relations and the theatrics of mass politics. At the same time, Carter weaves through their stories a riveting account of the events that led to World War I, showing how the personal and the political interacted, sometimes to devastating effect.

For all three men the war would be a disaster that destroyed forever the illusion of their close family relationships, with any sense of peace and harmony shattered in a final coda of murder, betrayal and abdication

“Although elegant in both its writing and production, this book’s transition to audio poses the hurdle of “name overdose” for listeners. In Queen Victoria’s family alone there were several Victorias and Georges, and the queen insisted that all her grandsons be named Albert. Add these names to the multiple Alexanders and Williams of the Russian and German relatives, and one’s brain is in chaos by the third chapter. British narrator Rosalyn Landor speaks with a sovereign dignity befitting her historic subjects. Even when she inflects her voice to imitate children or foreigners, an aristocratic haughtiness remains. Landor speaks the author’s vast vocabulary with a comfort sure to intimidate many listeners who may wish they had a dictionary next to them in the car or at the gym.” — AudioFile