This is the self-portrait of one man's journey through life, schooled at two prestigious boarding schools in St Petersburg. He was chosen as one of two chamber pages to Princess Alix at her wedding to Tsar Nicholas II. Commissioned into the elite Egersky Life Guards Regiment, he paints a vivid picture of regimental life: the officers' mess on Ruzovskaya Street, guard duty at the Winter Palace and Anichkov Palace, the Peter and Paul Fortress and at the Tsar's coronation in Moscow, Military manoeuvres at Krasnoe Selo, and life in fashionable St Petersburg. In 1901 he attended the General Staff Academy, graduating in 1904 with the General Leontiev Prize for his thesis on strategy. The scene changes to the Far East where, as a junior staff officer, Boris took part in the war against Japan. After Russia's defeat, he describes his provincial posting to a divisional HQ in Kiev before being invited to teach tactics at St Petersburg's General Staff Academy. After obtaining his professoriate, Boris' destiny was irrevocably changed with the start of the First World War. He describes his career against the backdrop of Russia's fortunes, from the successful Galician campaign through to the disastrous retreat and eventual stalemate after the Kerensky Offensive and the Bolshevik takeover.
 
John Elverson, the son of a British Army officer, was born in Kenya during the final years of the British Empire. He was educated at Cheltenham College and Reading University, where he studied agriculture. He worked for the Commonwealth Development Corporation on their cattle ranch in the Kalahari Desert before joining a London software company developing business applications. After setting up his own software company and running it for a number of years he joined GE Caledonian, the Scottish arm of GE Aircraft Engines.