Dimensions
180 x 255 x 55mm
The name Potemkin is best-known today for a battleship mutiny at the time of the Russian revolution, rather than as the one-eyed, fat, vain, autocratic lover of Russia's Empress, Catherine the Great, the only man she treated as an equal, who commanded her armies, helped her rule the country and develop the Russian empire.
Born of a loveless marriage, Potemkin worked his way up through the ranks of the Russian army. He first met the Empress Catherine while he was on guard duty in St Petersburg. German-born, she was married at fourteen for dynastic reasons, but her marriage was never consummated. She took a procession of lovers, but showed the longest fidelity to Potemkin.
As a soldier and consummate politician, Potemkin's legacy was to secure the boundaries of Russia to the south that we know today. When he died, aged only fifty, en route to assume the mantle of King of Poland, Catherine went into a depression from which she never fully recovered.
The thousands of letters he and Catherine exchanged are a source of this enthralling story of one of the great love affairs in history.
