Thirteen Years at the Russian Court: A Personal Record of the Last Years and Death of the Tsar Nicholas II, and His Family

This book is an important account of the final years of the Imperial Russian court, written by the French tutor who was employed to the court to teach the children of the Czar. Easy to read with a wealth of info and personal anecdotes you wont find in conventional histories of this time and place. As a student of Russian history and culture, this book has been an invaluable source for me. I highly recommend it.

The author writes very precisely about day to day life as tutor to the Czar's son. He is very observant to details and inadvertantly reveals his own opinions and prejudices as he writes. Unfortunately, the last days of the family are a second hand account as he was separated from them before their last move. This tragic story is well known, but he provides a different perspective on the lives of the participants.

Colonel Acoutin, one of the Czar's guards, was a close friend. He fought on the White Russian side but managed to escape. He often recounted the story of the Revolution, at my request. I met his brother who had been imprisoned in Siberia, with a knife wound on his neck to prove it. Later I met briefly Prince Serge Obolensky in New York. Unfortunately, I didn't know who he was at the time. Colonel used to be amazed that the book "Nicholas and Alexandra" had been published. Russia was then the USSR. He couldn't fathom how the author got his hands on the material. He said that no one knew about Alexis' hemophilia. So no one understood the Czarina's attachment to Rasputin. So this book was very personal to me. I loved that it came from someone who was close to the family -- not an historian. He did a huge service by getting the forensic information out of the country. It's a wonderful book from the Romanoff perspective.

I have to join the troops of readers who enjoyed this book. More than many others i've read regarding the Romanovs, both fiction and non, this is an unique view of the family as seen from an insider, one with on-going daily contact. Teacher to the five children and also a devoted companion to the Tsarevitch Alexei, Pierre Gilliard writes openly and honestly, giving the reading HIS viewpoint. He stayed with them all until they arrived at their final home and murder site in the town of Ekaterinburg, where he was not permitted. Emotionally crushed he remained loyal to his death. " And death came, but death refused to separate those whom life had so closely bound together,and it took them all seven, united in one faith and in one love."

This was Pierre Gillard's autobiographical account of his years as tutor to the children of Tsar Nicholas and Tsaritsa Alexandra. Considering his 13 years of service to them, and his intense loyalty in staying with them until he forcibly separated from them after they were all arrested, I was a little disappointed with the lack of feeling of this book. At times he wrote as if he was a historian (about governmental workings that I'm pretty sure he would have had no personal knowledge of at the time as the family tutor) which went beyond the scope of this book. He was also surprisingly drawn in by some of the vicious gossip of the time. While he claims to write this book to support the family, he also is surprisingly derogatory to their close personal friend Anna Vryubova, succumbing to spreading malicious propaganda about her, that after having read quite a bit about her (through other sources), I am virtually certain wasn't true. Still, despite his shortcomings, Gillard, a Swiss, was to be admired for his deep devotion to the family and his willingness to be arrested and held in captivity with them in order to continue his service to a family he deeply admired (something Vyrubova did as well). Such devotion speaks volumes about their character. While I wanted to read this book to gain a clearer sense of this era in history (a time of great personal interest to me) but I was disappointed in that it wasn't as personal as other autobiographical accounts I've read of the same period.

I liked this book - it moved along very well. I managed to learn some things, too, which is unusual after having so many books about the Romanovs. The account of the executions of the Russian Royal family at the end was riveting and included information I had not heard before. Nicholas and Alexandra were portrayed in a way that was believable - as good people who tried their best, but were destined to fail - unlike the fawning, never-ending praise given them by Anna Viroubova in her book, "Memories of the Russian Court." I highly recommend this book.

I have always been curious about the Romanov family and their sad fate. I was intrigued to discover this book written by someone with firsthand knowledge of the family. The writing style was not the greatest, but it was adequate. The author's depiction of the Czar and Czarina in particular were fascinating, but sad. According to the author, these people were not arrogant or authoritative in the least and would have happily gone into exile to live a simple life. If that is true, what a shameful disgrace their treatment, much less their murder, was. The book was an interesting read.

Very well written and accurate history of the last years/days of the Czar and his family from the tutor of the Czar’s children. He was with the family right to their horrid ending.