The Romanovs 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore, book review

A new account of the Russian dynasty, spanning 300 years, relishes the sex and violence but lacks an overarching theme

A conventional history: Tsar Nicholas II with his children on a tennis court (Alamy)

Simon Sebag Montefiore's blockbuster history of the Romanov dynasty arrives with exquisite timing. Planned, no doubt, with a view to next year's centenary of the last tsar's abdication – and the far more problematical centenary, for today's Russia, of the Bolshevik revolution that followed – its publication also coincides with the BBC's much-praised, much-debated, dramatisation of War and Peace, as well as Lucy Worsley's series, Empire of the Tsars. Imperial Russia in general, and the Romanovs in particular, are suddenly box office. A popular wave is already in motion for Sebag Montefiore's volume to ride. And, if you take just the final fifth of the book, the historian's account of the last months, days and hours of the Romanovs will not disappoint. "Catastrophe" – the chapter which charts Nicholas II's reluctant departure and the upheavals at home and abroad that forced his hand – and "Afterlife", which speeds grimly to the brutal denouement – show Sebag Montefiore's narrative bravado at its scintillating best.

There is unlikely to have been a racier account of how the last Romanovs met their end. Naïve, even delusional, these in-bred aristocrats may have been, but they remained dignified to the end – in contrast to the panicky and thuggish executioners who rushed to act as the White forces closed in. Sandwiched between these two rip-roaring chapters is the strange episode of Michael II, who reigned for a day, before grasping that the dynasty was no more. But Sebag Montefiore sets out to do much more than add his own brand of heightened drama to the already copious literature on Nicholas and Alexandra. His self-imposed task is to write a history of the Romanov dynasty, from its faltering start in 1613, when 17-year-old Michael reluctantly accepted the throne of a land still ill-defined and racked by clan rivalries and plots.

For the first century, there was still no fixed order of succession, and the crown passed in a not always predictable way from father to son, husband to wife, brother to brother. Somehow, though, the dynasty held, and Sebag Montefiore guides his readers from these unpromising beginnings, through the grand designs of Peter I, to the expansionism of Catherine the Great and the hesitant reforms of Alexander II, and then to imperial Russia's inexorable decline. In the decade that follows, an autocracy claiming legitimacy from divine ordination wrestles with demands for constitutional modernity. As this bare outline should suggest, The Romanovs represents a huge and ambitious endeavour, and the finished volume reflects an enormous amount of work. The author has been able to tap new sources, including intimate Romanov diaries, thanks in part to the opening of archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union and also to his own family contacts.

Whether all of the material crammed into these pages adds up to the definitive history of the Romanovs is another matter. For a mass of anecdote and detail, however risqué and colourful they might be (and they are often both), does not of itself make for a fully coherent narrative, where the single force that binds is chronology. There are times, too, when Sebag Montefiore's style, which tends to the showy, with adjectives piled on top of each other and touches of the archaic, starts to grate. You wait, in vain, for an overarching idea that would bring everything together, or at least an argument to give it shape.

Sebag Montefiore's prologue, it is true, is a masterly essay on Russian history, which could stand by itself. But the perfunctory epilogue, on the hackneyed theme of Soviet and post-Soviet leaders ruling essentially as tsars, comes across as an ill-judged attempt to demonstrate contemporary relevance. Elsewhere, a remark about Romanov women being stronger characters than the men is left undeveloped, as is an acute observation about the loneliness of monarchy. Occasional allusions to modern Russia only point up the absence of anything resembling authorial judgement. The historian does not even try to consider the achievements – or failings – of each tsar or tsarina as they leave the stage. The only place there is the hint of such assessments is in some of the picture captions. Regrettably, the quality and display of the pictures also leaves something to be desired. Better fewer, but better, as Lenin urged in another context.

Each chapter is prefaced with a cast list – for which even this Russian-speaking reviewer was immensely grateful. How much, though, should readers need to interrupt their progress to consult this list? Is the proliferation of so many names, variations of names, and nicknames really necessary, or does it betray a weakness of the storytelling and a misguided attempt to lend local colour? The division into three "acts" – "The Rise", "The Apogee", and "The Decline" suggests an effort to impose structure, but these themes are barely reflected in the text. Beyond the section titles, The Romanovs is a conventional, and rather old-fashioned, popular history, in the Antonia Fraser mould.

For all the presence of strong women in the Romanov dynasty, this account also comes across as very male in tone, with a gratuitous relishing of sex and violence. Raunchy goings-on have their place in revealing the Romanovs (and their courtiers) to be lusty human beings. But it is as though Britain's Prince – and future King – Charles were to be judged primarily by the so-called "tampon tapes" rather than by anything he might do in the public domain. The violence, especially the many descriptions of fearsome punishments, seems at times self-indulgent, as if calculated to appeal to teenage boys.

This emphasis has two consequences. The first is that some major landmarks of Russian history – the founding of St Petersburg, for instance, the Decembrist revolt, and the liberation of the serfs – are barely evident. If this is an intended reinterpretation of history, it would benefit from being explained. The second is that not only the Romanovs, but the Russians, emerge as almost uniquely promiscuous and brutal, even though other courts at the time – think Henry VIII of England – were hardly paragons of sophistication.

In painting so simplistic a picture, Sebag Montefiore reinforces a Western stereotype that persists to this day. The Romanovs, like the Russians they ruled, sometimes competently, often not, were a good deal more complicated than his magnum opus suggests, and the same is true of their successors.

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25. Order at the discounted price of £22 inc. p&p from the Independent Bookshop