In the hands of fools

Miranda Carter certainly has a penchant for awkward, often impossible characters. Her fascinating biography of Anthony Blunt explained, as well as anyone could, that strange mixture of aesthete, snob, revolutionary and traitor. Now she turns to the three monarchs who ruled Russia, Germany and Great Britain at the outbreak of the first world war. Nicholas II, Wilhelm II and George V are not as intelligent or as interesting as Blunt but they sat at the centre of great powers and great affairs.

What a strange and sad collection they were. Nicholas hated being Tsar and did his best to avoid difficult decisions. Even as Russia stumbled towards revolution he refused to cede an iota of power, in the conviction that God had entrusted him with an unalterable autocracy. Wilhelm, so many of his ministers feared, was not quite sane. He may have suffered brain damage when his 18-year-old mother struggled to give birth to him; he was certainly left with a withered arm about which he was painfully sensitive.