Frances Welch

It's hard to imagine, but this short book (sub-titled "The story of the Englishman who taught the children of the last Tsar") is mostly dull as dishwater. Sydney Gibbes was apparently a very strange dude; he studied theology at Cambridge, but didn't feel he had a true calling to the Church, and didn't know what else to do, so off he went to Russia in 1901 to tutor children. Things did not go well with the first two families that employed him; both mothers found reason to dismiss him, but nothing is made very clear about the nature of their complaints. His later explanation of both instances was that the mother were over-indulgent and would not let him impose his stricter standards on their precious boys. He shuttled back and forth between Russia and Yorkshire for several years, with only part-time employment, until 1908, when he was somehow hired by the Tsarina (who had not met him, nor checked his references too closely, apparently) to teach the Imperial children. This should have been fascinating stuff, and it seems the author had a fair amount of primary source material to consult, including contemporary correspondence and later accounts by the man himself (he lived to be 85, and eventually became a rather quirky priest in the Russian Orthodox Church). Yet his story never really catches fire here.
Reviewed March 2018… (mere)

I had high hopes for this, as I've always found the Romanovs and their relationship with Rasputin to be fascinating. The fact that this book was supposed to consist of mostly hearsay didn't bother me. Just treat it as anything you'd come across on Facebook (with a huge pinch of salt), and I figured it could be highly entertaining.

Unfortunately the book isn't so much a book as a collection of sentences. There is no narrative flow, possibly due to the fact that there are far too many short sentences, with little to tie them together and a whole lot of jumping back and forth along the timeline, for no discernible reason other than that the author must have thought of something then and there, so there it was going to sit.
Basically, the whole thing lacks cohesion, and could really, really use a better editor.

Disappointed.… (mere)

I found this book disturbing in the author's quite cavalier approach to the sexual assaults perpetrated by Rasputin. For example, "There was the odd scandal, including a woman who claimed he [Rasputin] raped her in his cellar." (p.45) In another instance, Welch describes a woman who, "as a nun, ... had suffered a run-in with the mad monk Iliodor, in the course of which she claimed he raped her..." (p.125) What I find disturbing is that she precedes this comment by stating this woman "had been distincly unstable when Rasputin met her." Perhaps the woman was "unstable" because she'd been sexually assaulted? Welch never draws attention to that possibility.

These are only a few examples - the book is rife with this kind of thoughtless and sexist discussion. There is a distinct sexist streak in the entire book - often subtle, but in many cases (as above) glaringly obvious.
I will not recommend this book to anyone, as I find that kind of insensitivity disturbing.… (mere)