The story you are about to read is one of great rank and privilege, of huge wealth and power, and of treachery, corruption and lies. My name is Alec Johnson, or so my adopted parents had told me, and so it would have stayed had the stranger not come, and with him brought the notebook which was to prove the first of those lies. What possible connection could there be between me, a seventy-one year old gamekeeper in the Scottish Highlands, and a Royal Proclamation signed by Tsar Paul in 1798? How could the events surrounding the massacre of the Russian royal family in 1918, and whether Grand Duchess Anastasia had escaped, have any possible connection to me? Why would the intrigue surrounding the flight of Rudolf Hess, Deputy Fuhrer of Nazi Germany to Scotland in 1941, be of anything other than historical interest to me, and how could I possibly have anything to do with the demand by Islamic militants to withdraw our troops from their countries, or to the formation of the Islamic Self-Defence Force (ISDF). None of those things, or so I thought, but all of those things in fact! Nathan is an excellent narrator who creates a lot of suspense in The Forgotten Tsar. His research is superb. H. P. Thur, Literary Editor NZZ Libero, Switzerland.
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