Blogs which describe moments in my life, or the lives of my family.
One thing I had to consider when updating my grandmother’s memoir Upheaval, was whether or not to include a family tree. My grandmother had included a list of the important characters at the beginning of her memoir, but I thought a family tree would be better, as it would not
As some of you might know, or remember, I have been working on updating my grandmother’s memoir Upheaval to include explanatory notes and her diary from 1919. Upheaval describes my grandmother, Olga Woronoff’s life as a young aristocrat in Imperial Russia and details the impact of the Russian Revolution and
Christmas for me has always been more of a German holiday than a Russian one. It was a time of year that meant more to my Baltic German father, than to my Russian mother who put more effort into celebrating Easter. December 25th was a low key celebration as we
With Christmas fast approaching, I was looking for something to get me in the mood, something festive and traditional. Every now and again I look through the old bound copies of the St Nicholas magazines which sit on the bottom shelves of my bookcase. Today I opened the oldest of
If she were still alive my mother would have celebrated her 100th birthday on the 9th of November this year. When I was reminded of this, I realised how little I know about her. I remember asking her about her childhood but I can only recall one or two stories
It is 1918 and Russia is in the last stages of World War II. On the 3rd of March of that year the newly formed Russian government, under the leadership of Lenin, signed a peace treaty with Germany called the Brest-Litovsk treaty, ending Russia’s involvement in the war. For the