[7][8] He won an exhibition to read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge[9] where he received his Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD).

[10] Montefiore worked as a banker, a foreign affairs journalist, and a war correspondent covering the conflicts during the fall of the Soviet Union.

[12] Young Stalin won the LA Times Book Prize for Best Biography,[13] the Costa Book Award,[14] the Bruno Kreisky Award for Political Literature, Le Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique[15] and was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

In February 2017, Angelina Jolie announced that she was developing "Simon Sebag Montefiore's Catherine the Great and Potemkin" with Universal Studios.

[25] Also in early 2017, the film studio Lionsgate Films announced it had bought Montefiore's Jerusalem: the Biography to make it into a long running multi episodic TV drama series which will be "character-driven, action-filled account of war, betrayal, faith, fanaticism, slaughter, persecution and co-existence in the universal holy city through the ages.

[27] The film scriptwriter and director Neil Jordan has been attached to the project to adapt the book for television, and he will also be acting as producer.

[30] Also in July 2018, it was announced that Hat Trick Productions had taken up an option on Montefiore's novel One Night in Winter, in order to make a TV adaptation.

According to Kotkin, "No author on Russia writes better than Montefiore whose perceptiveness and portraiture here are frequently sublime ... a marvellous read and the last third from fin de siecle insanity to revolutionary cataclysm is dazzling.

The author brings his cast of dynastic titans, rogues and psychopaths to life with pithy, witty pen portraits, ladling on the sex and violence.

Montefiore energetically fulfills his promise to write a 'genuine world history, not unbalanced by excessive focus on Britain and Europe.'

In zesty sentences and lively vignettes, he captures the widening global circuits of people, commerce, and culture.”[37] For The Times, Gerard DeGroot summed up the book as: "A history of the world from the Neanderthals to Trump.

Montefiore is a natural storyteller who brings his encyclopedic knowledge of Russian history to life in language that glitters like the ice of St Petersburg".

"[42] The last novel in the trilogy, Red Sky at Noon (2017), was called "a deeply satisfying pageturner – mythic and murderous" by The Times[43] and "brilliant on multiple levels ... offering historical accuracy, a fine empathy for his characters and a story that illuminates the operatic tragedy of Stalin's Russia" by Booklist.