Rating: 
Summary: A piece of self serving garbage.
Review: Well, kiddies, for those of you who are not 'au fait' with the life and times of the late Mrs John Manahan, who really WAS Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaievna of Russia, don't worry about reading this piece of self serving garbage that was written, seemingly, to undo all of Peter Kurth's fine work, and drive a wedge among Mrs Manahan's supporters in Europe and America. I don't understand how this dreadful book came to be published and how people can be taken in by it. [I read in an Australian magazine that Australia's leading dance historian thought it was his all time favourite book. Poor Soul.] Peter Kurth's book will never be equalled. Get it, read it, memorise it, and thank heaven that Kurth wrote it. To those of you who are taken in by the DNA results ask yourself this: Why, when Mrs Manahan was so clearly who she claimed to be, do people want her to be Franziska Schanzovska? DNA is all very well, but that doesn't explain how a large Polish peasant, with shoe size 39 turns into a small Russian lady who shoe size is 36. Also, if Mrs Manahan was a fraud why did the various Royal families in Europe try to buy her off with offers of a lifetime of quiet luxury if only she would abandon her claim? If she was an imposter why bother? There were plenty of other women who claimed to be Anastasia, but no-one offered to buy them off, but then, but they didn't claim to have seen their Uncle of Hesse at Tsarskoe Selo during the First World War! There are some factual errors in the book that any editor over forty years of age could have picked up. When he talks of Mrs Manahan being like Miss Haversham I take it he means Miss Havisham from Dickens' "Great Expectations?" The book is full of little irritants like this. The second half of the book is embarrassing. Therein lies the paradox of this book: Blair Lovell was not capable for appearing credible on his subject for five minutes without exposing himself by a hundred little signs that he hadn't rehearsed his subject or her background. Basically then, he's a fraud. And his subject was a woman who claimed for over half a century to be who she said she was, and she never gave herself away once! Not a fraud. I'm sorry the author died at a young age, but let that be a lesson to us all.
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