Minute by haunting minute, merciless executions that shook the world

Doomed: The Tsar, his four beautiful daughters and disabled son

7AM, TUESDAY, JULY 16, 1918

It Is a grey morning in ekaterinburg. A group of nuns from a nearby convent arrive at Ipatiev house with their daily supply of milk for the former imperial family.

Yesterday, their gaoler, secret police commandant Yakov Yurovsky, a tall, smart- looking, ruthless Bolshevik, handed the nuns a note requesting a large number of eggs, so today they have brought more than 50. they are not just for the Romanovs — he needs them to feed the men he has selected to carry out their murders.

9AM

having prayed together, the Romanov family are having a simple breakfast of black bread and tea in their first-floor living quarters. It is the 78th day of their confinement here.

Yesterday, four local women who had come to clean the house were struck by how ‘small and drab’ their balding former tsar looked, but they were impressed at how he carefully carried his weak haemophiliac son, 13-year- old Alexei, from his bed to his wheelchair.

Alexei’s sisters — Anastasia, 17, Maria, 19, tatiana, 21, and olga, 22, the most famous and glamorous royal princesses in europe — helped with the chores. A cleaner whispered to them: ‘Please god you will not have to suffer under the yoke of these monsters for much longer.’

11.30AM

It Is time for the family’s morning walk in the small garden. the windows of Ipatiev house are whitewashed and, apart from one, nailed shut, so they find it a relief to escape its confines.

the family have been warned that if anyone puts their head out of the window, they will be shot. the house was requisitioned by the Bolsheviks from a