Robert K. Massie

Robert Kinloch Massie III ( born 1929 in Lexington, Kentucky) is an American historian who has published several books on the Russian noble family of the Romanovs.

Life

Robert Kinloch Massie III. grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. He studied American and European history at Yale University and with the help of a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford. He then became a journalist for Newsweek and The Saturday Evening Post. In 1967 he moved to France with his family. Previously, he published but with Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia a biography of Nicholas II and Alix of Hesse- Darmstadt, the last monarchical ruler of Russia. It was his breakthrough as a historian and has been translated under the title in the German language and filmed under the title of Nicholas and Alexandra. In 1995 he published with The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, an updated version of his book.

For his second biography Peter the Great: His Life and World over Peter I. Massie in 1981 won a Pulitzer Prize for Best Biography. Under the title of Peter the Great in 1986, the book was filmed as a mini series with actress like Maximilian Schell, Laurence Olivier and Vanessa Redgrave.

Massie is married for the second time. With the author Suzanne Rohrbach, with whom he was married from 1954 to 1990, he has three children. With his second wife Deborah L. Karl, with whom he has been married since 1992, he has a common child.

Work

• Nicholas and Alexandra. An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia. Athenum, New York NY 1967. Nicholas and Alexandra. The last Romanovs and the end of Tsarist Russia. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1968.

• Peter the Great. His life and his times. Athenaeum, Königstein / Ts. 1982, ISBN 3-7610-8129-4.

• The Romanovs. The last chapter. Berlin -Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3- 8270-0070 -X.