Simon Sebag Montefiore is an internationally bestselling author whose books are published in forty-eight languages and who has won prizes for both fiction and history. Catherine the Great and Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the British Book Awards History Book of the Year Prize; Young Stalin won the Costa Biography Award (UK), the LA Times Book Prize for Biography (USA), the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique (France) and the Kreisky Prize (Austria); Jerusalem: The Biography won the Wenjin Book Prize (Peoples Republic of China) and the Jewish Book Council Book of the Year (US) ; The Romanovs: 1613-1918 won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize (Italy); and The World: a Family History of Humanity was The Times History Book of the Year. He is the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: Sashenka, Red Sky at Noon and One Night in Winter, which won the Political Fiction Book of the Year Award. He has presented five TV series for BBC and many of his books are being developed for the screen. His latest book is The Cauldron: the Making of the Modern Middle East.