Posts about both sides of my family
Booth Tarkington, who twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in 1919 and 1922, wrote the Introduction to the original edition of my grandmother’s memoir, Upheaval. Upheaval was originally published in 1932, some four years after my grandparents migrated to America. I often wondered how it was that my grandmother
In the midst of renovating my new home, I have been neglecting my blog posts. I simply haven’t been able to keep an eye on everything changing around me, while at the same time trying to have more of a presence on social media (that’s not really happening either), continue
If you have ever wondered why I wanted to update my grandmother’s memoir, this post will explain all. When my father died in 2012 I inherited many documents, letters and photographs which were relevant to both sides of my family. For a couple of years they languished in boxes in
The first time my grandmother, Countess Olga Kleinmichel, saw Empress Alexandra the Empress wasn’t smiling. In fact, according to my grandmother’s memoir in which she describes the celebration of Grand Duchess Olga’s sixteenth birthday, Empress Alexandra “wore an expression of weariness and sadness which ‘society’ took for coldness and haughtiness.”
I’m always interested in reading about my grandparents and my latest purchase doesn’t disappoint. George Hawkins, who has translated the diaries and letters of members of the last Imperial Family of Russia, has translated the 1914 diary of Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna, second daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and the
Several years ago I reread the book my grandmother had written in the early 1930’s, her memoir Upheaval. I have always been curious. From the moment I could formulate a question, I wanted to know “why”; why some things happened and others didn’t, why people made the decisions they made,