Tsar Nicholas II of All the Russias and his desperately ill heir, Tsarevich Alexei, had less than three months to live when the specially guarded Imperial prison train arrived at Ekaterinburg on April 30th, 1918.

A year earlier, the Tsar had abdicated in favour of the government that preceded Lenin. In the first few months, under a semblance of a government, respect had lingered for someone whom most Russians regarded as a near-God. By April, the Bolsheviks had taken control. Little respect remained.

In Ekaterinburg, it was predictable. Ekaterinburg is a mining town in the heart of the Urals and from the Urals Lenin had drawn the fiercest support for his revolution. The coming of the Imperial family had been kept secret, but inevitably there had been rumours. The carriage from the station to Ipatiev house, where they were to be held, was jeered at and spat upon and initially the guards were as much to protect them from mob violence as to prevent any rescue attempt.

At the time of his abdication, Tsar Nicholas had been the richest man in the world. Still with him at Ekaterinburg was a train load of personal possessions he had been allowed to assemble. Had he survived the Russian Revolution, the priceless contents of that baggage train would have ensured a life as luxurious as any he had known throughout his fifty years. Among the treasures was a stamp collection. Befitting the world’s richest man, it was worth a fortune, 1,274 items carefully annotated and catalogued in a set of hand-tooled leather albums.

Its creation had been conceived as early as 1907, when Nicholas had decided that three hundred years of Romanov suzerainty should be celebrated by a stamp issue depicting the emperors and empresses of the dynasty. Work had begun in 1909 and at every stage during the four years it had taken to create, the Tsar was involved, making his personal choice of the drawings and the essays and the specimens.