News

Few people can own an armchair the way Simon Sebag Montefiore does.

The bestselling British author relaxes into one in the lobby of a downtown Toronto hotel, and sits there as if ensconced in the corner of a private gentlemen's club, arms resting limply on upholstered arms, head swiveled to one side so he can gaze out the window to contemplate his response to questions, legs crossed, one foot bobbing up and down.

Mr. Montefiore is dressed casually in blue jeans, a fitted white shirt, shiny loafers and striped socks, but everything about him - his charm, his smooth conversational ease, his air of mastery - betrays his privilege.

"Sebag" or simply "Bag" to his friends, Mr. Montefiore, 43, is a historian who has written three highly praised books about Russia: Catherine the Great and Potemkin; Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, and Young Stalin.

His recently published novel Sashenka mines the same rich territory.

The epic family story about a headstrong young woman spans the end of the Tsarist period, the Stalin era and the modern oligarchs.

In England, Mr. Montefiore's fame as a writer is as great as his reputation as a toff, the British word for a member of the upper class. He serves as a nexus for a social whirl of Royals, famous authors, publishers and politicians. He is married to Santa Montefiore, an author of popular historical romance, who is from the well-connected Palmer-Tomkinson family. At the couple's wedding in 1998, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles made their first public appearance together. Conrad Black was one of the 400 guests.

But Mr. Montefiore prefers to play down his glittering social life. "I just want to be judged by my work," Mr. Montefiore demurs when asked about it.

Interestingly, however, it is that life, with all its moneyed perfection, that compelled him to escape it when he was younger.

"I had been to a [boys'] boarding school [Harrow] where you wear tails and top hats, then I went to Cambridge and then to a bank, and I was a bit bored," he says laconically. "I was desperate to live roughly and see danger."

On his father's side, he is descended from a wealthy banking family of Moroccan-Italian Jews who made their fortune at the start of 19th century "playing the markets in intelligence about the Battle of Waterloo," according to a recent Vanity Fair article on the couple. His mother's family is descended from Russian peasants.

"In 1991, the Soviet Union broke up, and all my life I wanted to go there," he recalls. Living in New York at the time, he began to travel to Russia for months at a time, to Estonia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Georgia. "Wherever I went, civil war broke out. I wanted to see history in the making." Though untrained as a journalist, he wrote stories for The New York Times, The New Republic, The Spectator and The Times, among other publications.

What he didn't write for newspapers fed his need for adventure. "I had some near-death experiences in those wars, when people put guns against my head. I wasn't a terribly brave war correspondent. I was totally flappable. [In 1993] during the wars in the Caucasus between Azerbaijan and Armenia they let me shoot back. It was babyish stuff, " he says, shaking his head. "I'm not proud of it."

The stories only enhanced his reputation as a playboy on the social circuit in London. His former girlfriends include Koo Stark, the model who once dated Prince Andrew. And he admits to "these amazing short love affairs" during his time in Russia. "You spend two or three days together and yet in that time you shared everything. You were in great danger, and it was kind of a poetry in that way."

After he and his wife married, they both decided to write for a living. Two previous novels of his, written in his 20s, had been published, but not widely. Ms. Montefiore, as befits her class, had been working in the fashionable shops of Mayfair. "We decided we'd jump together," he explains. "When we wrote the early books, we lived in a small flat and we wrote together at a small table. We were constantly arguing and it was quite stressful."

Ms. Montefiore turns out a book a year. She has written 10 so far and enjoys a popular following. Mr. Montefiore's history books have won prestigious awards and are published in more than 30 countries.

Young Stalin was hailed as a major historic achievement as it made use of journals by Stalin's mother that Mr. Montefiore had found in unprecedented access to Georgian archives. Miramax bought the film rights. "I want Johnny Depp to play Stalin," Mr. Montefiore says.

His novel Sashenka had been in his head for a long time, he says, adding that the 500-page book took only one year to write. Tightly paced and rich in detail, it tells the story of Sashenka Zeitlin, a beautiful Jewish woman who married a senior Communist Party leader and later came under suspicion in a twisting plot of love, revenge and violence.

The Montefiores own a large house in London's Kensington neighbourhood that they share with their two children, Lily and Sasha. Ms. Montefiore works in an aerie on the top floor, while her husband remains in a greenhouse-like office on the ground floor. Their household is rather chaotic, he allows, with children rushing in and out of their parents' work spaces.

"I think if you married Danielle Steel you might find it competitive," he explains. "But we started together, and we are both sort of proud of each other. We feel lucky to live this life."

Besides, the writing life fits into a privileged one. "We go for dinner in the south of France and drink rosé and just come up with some plot," he says from deep in his armchair. "It's a very nice thing to do with your wife."