The Dying Boy and the Fall of an Empire

In October 1912, the Imperial Family of Russia retreated to a hunting lodge in the forests of Spała, Poland.

It was supposed to be a holiday.

Instead, eight-year-old Tsarevich Alexei—the only son of Nicholas II and heir to the Russian throne—suffered a catastrophic hemorrhage. The doctors could do almost nothing. His mother, Empress Alexandra, prepared herself for the possibility that her son was dying.

Then came a telegram from Grigori Rasputin.

Alexei recovered.

In this episode of The Common Room, we use Royce Ryton’s remarkable BBC radio drama Holiday in Spała as the doorway into the true story behind it.

How accurately does the play portray the Romanovs? What really happened to Alexei at Spała? Why did Alexandra place such extraordinary faith in Rasputin? And how could the illness of one little boy ultimately matter to the fate of the largest empire on earth?

Drawing on eyewitness accounts from people who were actually there—including Pierre Gilliard, General Alexander Spiridovitch, and Anna Vyrubova—we meet Nicholas and Alexandra not merely as figures in a history book, but as a father and mother facing something terrifying.

And hanging over everything is what we know but they don’t.

World War I is less than two years away.

Nicholas has less than five years left on the Russian throne.

The Romanov dynasty, which has ruled Russia for three centuries, is approaching its end.

For one autumn in 1912, however, none of that has happened yet.

There is only a hunting lodge in the Polish forest, a desperately ill little boy, a frightened mother—and a mysterious message from Siberia.

Stories • Ideas • Wonder

🎧 First Listen to the play

Holiday in Spała — Chesterton Radio

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