Elena Ceaușescu

Romania was the only country facing wide spread violence during the 1989 revolutions; officially, 1,104 people died and 3,300 were injured. Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship, believed to be the most brutal and repressive in Eastern Europe, was without doubt one of the main reasons for such a tragic end - as the work ''The 1989 Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe.

A new book about the British monarch's diplomatic activities recounts how Queen Elizabeth "hid behind a hedge" in the garden of London's Buckingham Palace to avoid having to meet Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife during their controversial state visit to Britain in 1978.