He was the Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich, the tall, handsome brother of Tsar Nicholas II. She was Nathalie Wulfert, the extraordinarily beautiful daughter of a Moscow lawyer and the wife of a Guards officer - the man for whom she had divorced her first husband, a musician. For Grand Duke Michael it was love at first sight - a passion that would never fade and that would lead to disgrace, cruel humiliation, and banishment.

But Michael and Natasha is much more than an astonishing love story. In part a portrait of the last age of elegance, it is also an account of the First World War, of frontline heroism, and of the events that brought about the downfall of Nicholas II and his abdication in favor of his brother. What happened afterward changed history, and what happened to Michael - the last Romanov to be proclaimed Emperor - is a story that, until now, has never been told.