Anastasia

ANASTASIA is the first, definitive, full-length biography of 'Anna Anderson' who has claimed since 1920 to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, the youngest daughter of the Tsar. It is the story of a mystery, a controversy, a mammouth court-case and a twentieth-century legend which until now has never been examined with full access to the wealth of private papers, letters, interviews and original sources drawn on by Peter Kurth. 19941207

When she did declare herself - as the Grand Duchess Anastasia, youngest daughter of the murdered Romanovs - she became the centre of a storm of controversy that still continues after her death in 1983.On 17 February 1920 a young woman was rescued from a Berlin canal and taken to a local asylum. Her body bore the scars of bullet and bayonet wounds. For a long time she refused to give her name, and was known as Fraulein Unbekannt (Miss Unknown). When she did declare herself - as the Grand Duchess Anastasia, youngest daughter of the murdered Romanovs - she became the centre of a storm of controversy that still continues after her death in 1983. Peter Kurth's brilliant and meticulously researched account shows that the evidence that Anna Anderson was Anastasia is in the end overwhelming. Nevertheless the extraordinary secrecy which still shrouds some of the key evidence suggests that, as her uncle the Grand Duke of Hesse wrote, an investigation of her identity could be 'dangerous'.