George and the Romanovs
From C.D.C. Armstrong Sir: Simon Hoggart in his review of the Channel 4 documentary Three Kings at War (Arts, 16/23 December) writes that George V reneged on a promise to provide political asylum to Nicholas II, 'fearing the Romanovs would foment Bolshevism here'. What the documentary did not make clear was that the original proposal to invite the Tsar and the Imperial Family to Britain was made while they were in the custody not of the Bolsheviks but of the provisional government, which Lenin displaced late in 1917. When the Romanovs were imprisoned in Ekaterinburg by the Bolsheviks, plans were made (though not executed) by British intelligence to rescue them — plans which the documentary dealt with at some length.
George V may have been guilty of a lack of prescience but he cannot in this case be convicted of heartlessness or stupidity.
Colin Armstrong Belfast
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