The Plots to Rescue the Czar Book

Shay McNeal's The Plots to Rescue the Tsar centres around the fact that in 1995, US and Russian scientists announced that the DNA testing of the sample from Grand Duke George, the brother of Tsar Nicholas II, and the purported remains of the Tsar himself had produced a match. After nearly 80 years of intrigue, including several women claiming to be Anastasia, one of the Tsar's daughters, the mystery of what happened to the Russian royal family in July 1918 appeared to be solved. They were shot by the Bolsheviks in the cellar of the house at Ekaterinburg where they were being held, and buried in an unmarked grave nearby. At least, that's what the world's media seem to conclude, but Shay McNeal begs to differ. McNeal is a businesswoman with a passion for history, and The Plots to Rescue the Tsar represents a considerable labour of love as she has followed every lead and every red herring in the pursuit of the truth. The result is a highly readable account that throws considerable doubt on the official history. The DNA evidence turns out to be far less definitive than it initially appeared and the supposed skull of the Tsar lacked the scarring one might have expected from someone who had been attacked by a would-be assassin in Japan in 1891. However, just because these bones almost certainly aren't those of the Romanovs, it doesn't follow that the family wasn't murdered in 1918, and while McNeal offers several possible versions of events involving the British, German, US, French, Czech, Japanese and Bolshevik secret services, she fails to come up with anything wholly conclusive herself. So while she shows that the British royal family wasn't quite so cavalier with their Russian cousins' lives as has been believed so far, whether the Romanovs died in 1918 or were smuggled out of the country remains unclear. Fear not--this one will continue to run and run. --John CraceRead More