Simon Sebag Montefiore

Lenin had just reflected that the revolution would never happen in his lifetime when in February 1917, hungry crowds in Petrograd overthrew…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

I was driving across Georgia with a warlord and his bodyguards riding shotgun with their Kalashnikovs in a convoy of Mercedes and…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

Saddam Hussein admired, studied, and copied Stalin, the paragon of modern dictators.

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

“Nijedan dan, nijedan sat, nijedan minut nije prošao a da ga nije razdirala želja da je vidi, da joj priča, da je…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

“What's important is not who YOU love but WHO loves you.”

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

Stalin had 15 scenic seaside villas, some of them czarist palaces, on the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia. In 2002, I visited…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

My wife Santa is a fanatical skier, going to Klosters many times a year. To please her, I have for 12 years…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

Mugabe's resignation fascinates because the fall of tyrants is always a family story, decline of the father, writ large. What a strange…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

It is a characteristic of potentates that they don't succumb to peaceful retirement. Instead, they hold power in their hoary fists as…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

“Party-mindedness” was “an almost mystical concept,” explained Kopelev. “The indispensable prerequisites were iron discipline and faithful observance of all the rituals of…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian influence collapsed, and Moscow came to bitterly resent the Western interventions that…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

“- Nego, kako ti je žena? On odmahnu glavom. - Ja sam duhom daleko od svog doma. Dolazim i odlazim kao avet.…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

I enjoy tequila, which has a strange effect on people and makes parties more fun than warm white wine.

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

“Beneath the eerie calm of these unfathomable waters were deadly whirlpools of ambition, anger and unhappiness.”

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

“Jerusalem has a way of disappointing in tormenting both conquerors and visitors. The contrast between the real and heavenly cities is so…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

The disorder, uncertainty, and strife of a revolution make citizens yearn for stable authority, or they turn to radicalism.

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

I see the world as an adventure thriller and a voyage of discovery. To me, all lives are lives of mystery and…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

Moses Montefiore loved Jerusalem, lived for Jerusalem, and even made it our family motto. A Zionist before the word was invented, he…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

In 1942, the Germans were running out of fuel. They were advancing so fast across the grasslands, the hot grasslands of south…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

A reforming liberal leader in Russia is the Holy Grail of Kremlinology, but the search for one is as misguided and hopeless…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

“Love is a question of geography.”

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

“The Bolsheviks were atheists but they were hardly secular politicians in the conventional sense: they stooped to kill from the smugness of…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

As a youth, I was much more of a Zionist. But Israel was very different then. Israel's changed, and so have I.

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

“Šta bi bilo kada bih ti sad rekao, bez glupiranja, da kroz ova vrata ulazimo u tajni svet u kojem niko ne…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

When I'm up, I'm over-exuberant; when I'm down, I just wander round on my own. I have no middle space.

— Simon Sebag Montefiore