Ivan the Terrible

The definitive biography of Ivan the Terrible, setting the Tsar's infamous cruelty within the context of 16th-century Russia"[A] magnificent biography . . . illuminated by the wisdom gained by its author from a lifetime of learning and reflection about the place of Russia in the wider world."- Orlando Figes, New York Review of Books "Likely to become the definitive work on Ivan for some time."-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Ivan IV, "the Terrible" (1533-1584), is one of the key figures in Russian history, yet he has remained among the most neglected. Notorious for pioneering a policy of unrestrained terror-and for killing his own son-he has been credited with establishing autocracy in Russia. This is the first attempt to write a biography of Ivan from birth to death, to study his policies, his marriages, his atrocities, and his disordered personality, and to link them as a coherent whole. Isabel de Madariaga situates Ivan within the background of Russian political developments in th