Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won History Book of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards.

Montefiore's book Catherine the Great & Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Marsh Biography Award. Montefiore worked as a banker, a foreign affairs journalist, and a war correspondent covering the conflicts during the fall of the Soviet Union. He won an Exhibition to read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he received his Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD). In the autumn of 1983 he interviewed Margaret Thatcher for The Harrovian. Sebag Montefiore was educated at Ludgrove School and Harrow School where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Harrovian. Two teenaged girls were burned alive in Mexico City while a son escaped to Italy and changed his name to Montefiore. During the reign of Philip II of Spain, one of them became governor of a province of Mexico, where he and his family were denounced by a political rival and tortured by the Inquisition. After the 1492 Alhambra Decree was issued against the Jews in Spain, some of Montefiore's ancestors stayed in the country whilst remaining secretly Jewish. The Montefiore family are descended from a line of wealthy Sephardi Jews who were diplomats and bankers all over Europe and who originated from Morocco and Italy. Simon's brother is Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. Due to the Limerick boycott in 1904, her father Henry Jaffé left the country and moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, England. They bought tickets for New York City, but were cheated, being instead dropped off at Cork, Ireland. Her parents fled the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. Simon's mother was Phyllis April Jaffé (1927–2019) from the Lithuanian branch of the Jaffe family.

His father was psychotherapist Stephen Eric Sebag Montefiore (1926–2014), a great-grandson of the banker Sir Joseph Sebag-Montefiore, the nephew and heir of the wealthy philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, considered by some 'the most important Jew of the 19th century'. Simon Sebag Montefiore was born in London. Including Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2003), Monsters: History's Most Evil Men and Women (2008), Jerusalem: The Biography (2011), The Romanovs 1613–1918 (2016), among others. Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore ( / ˌ s aɪ m ən ˌ s iː b æ ɡ ˌ m ɒ n t ɪ f i ˈ ɔː r i/ born 27 June 1965) is a British historian, television presenter and author of popular history books and novels,

Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore