Library Journal
This personal and political study, with its revisionist take, will be popular with historians and general readers alike, and is highly recommended.
Publishers Weekly
King and Woolmans craft a sophisticated portrait of a man who cared deeply for his family, and was destroyed not just by an assassin’s bullet, but by a decrepit society that could not tolerate his independent streak.
Diana Mandache, author.
King and Woolmans have written the most comprehensive account of this momentous event available in English. In doing so, they offer readers an intriguing and startlingly revisionist look at this most famous of Archdukes, his family and their momentous collision with destiny in 1914.
The Bookbag
The authors are to be congratulated on having done their research so thoroughly … This is in some ways a sad book, yet it is still a rich biography, written partly with input from the Archduke’s direct descendants, and with a foreword by his great-granddaughter Sophie von Hohenberg. Above all, it inspires genuine pity for, and anger on behalf of, its main subjects and their children. At a time when the centenary of ‘the war to end wars’ is on the horizon, now is as good a time as any to recall the lives and deaths of its first two victims. This biography discharges that function to perfection.
Random Jottings blog
Please do read this marvellous book. Put it on your Christmas list, and if nobody buys it for you, then purchase it yourself. This going on my list of Random Books of the year. Simply wonderful. ‘The Assassination of the Archduke’ was made Random jottings 2013 Book of the Year.
The Royal Historian website
In the century since Franz Ferdinand’s and Sophie’s deaths, numerous myths and misconceptions have emerged concerning their characters. King and Woolmans separate fact from fiction … ‘The Assassination of the Archduke’ brings the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie to life … (it) is an excellent addition to any royal library, as it reveals the lives of a couple better known for how their deaths changed history.
Kirkus Reviews
An entertaining challenge to a century of misconceptions.
Historykon, Poland
The authors had access to documents from private archives of HM Queen Elizabeth II and members of royal and aristocratic families fro all over Europe … I devoured it.
Mowimyjak, Poland
It reads, this story, like a wonderful novel. Everything is there. A great romance.
Super Express, Poland
The book “Zabić arcyksięcia” is a fascinating story about the court, politics and international events … It’s perfect reading for the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the World War One.
John D Cofield on Amazon.com
Greg King and Sue Woolmans have given us an excellent dual biography of the Austrian Archduke and his Bohemian wife, that lets us see them as real people: a man and woman from different backgrounds who met, fell in love, got married despite enormous difficulties, and had a happy family life with their three children until they were murdered … King and Woolmans have done a masterful job of recreating the lives of the Archduke and his Countess … This is a highly readable, sympathetic account of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie’s lives. Their descendants collaborated with King and Woolmans to help them produce this book, which does much to counter the popular image of Franz Ferdinand as a humourless martinet, and Sophie as a scheming nobody determined to become Empress. We will never know what might have happened had Franz Ferdinand and Sophie not gone to Sarajevo that day in June 1914, but this book allows us to wonder whether the former Austria-Hungary, Europe, and the world might be better places now if that heavy set, awkward, but intelligent Archduke, and his just as intelligent wife had lived to rule a century ago.