This is a huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War the Russian Revolution & the struggle for votes for women. It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams a Welsh coal-mining family is linked by romance & enmity to the Fitzherberts aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson & to two orphaned Russian brothers whose plans to emigrate to America fall foul of war conscription & revolution. In a plot of unfolding drama & intriguing complexity Fall of Giants" moves seamlessly from Washington to St Petersburg from the dirt & danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty."