On Wednesday, March 9th at 12 noon take your lunchbreak with The Book Stall, as we welcome best-selling author Dr. Helen Rappaport to our virtual stage. She'll be discussing her new book, After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War, with The Book Stall's own Jon Grand. Kirkus Reviews says, "Helen Rappaport, a consummate historian, displays her deep research into the era, the city, and its denizens. A culturally vibrant account of Russians uprooted to Paris during a tumultuous time."  


About the Book: Helen Rappaport’s After the Romanovs is the story of the Russian aristocrats, artists, and intellectuals who sought freedom and refuge in the City of Light. Paris has always been a city of cultural excellence, fine wine and food and the latest fashions. But it has also been a place of refuge for those fleeing persecution, never more so than before and after the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Romanov dynasty. For years, Russian aristocrats had enjoyed all Belle Epoque Paris had to offer, spending lavishly when they visited. But the brutality of the Bolshevik takeover forced Russians of all types to flee their homeland, sometimes leaving with only the clothes on their backs. Arriving in Paris, former princes could be seen driving taxicabs, while their wives who could sew worked for the fashion houses, their unique Russian style serving as inspiration for designers like Coco Chanel. Talented intellectuals, artists, poets, philosophers and writers struggled in exile, eking out a living at menial jobs. Some, like Bunin, Chagall and Stravinsky, encountered great success in the same Paris that welcomed Americans like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Others became trapped in a cycle of poverty and their all-consuming homesickness for Russia, the homeland they had been forced to abandon. This is their story.

About the Author: Dr. Helen Rappaport is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including A Magnificent Obsession, The Romanov Sisters and Caught in the Revolution. She studied Russian Special Studies at Leeds University and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a specialist in Imperial Russian and Victorian history, and a frequent historical consultant on TV and radio. She lives in West Dorset.