Blogs which describe moments in my life, or the lives of my family.
I have a vague childhood memory of the evenings between Christmas on the 25December and Russian Christmas on the 7 January spent curled up on the sofa next to my mother, who was reading to me from The Nutcracker and The Mouse King. Opposite us was the Christmas tree we
On 1 January 1946 my great-grandmother, Catherine Nicolaievna Jakowzoff (formerly Countess Kleinmichel), sent a Christmas / New Year greeting to her granddaughter, my mother. The images of the card and the photo she sent are above. At the time of writing my great-grandmother was 81 and living in France, and
Grand Duchess Olga Nikolayevna as a nurse in WWI – postcard from the author’s personal collection
Rasputin, friend to Empress Alexandra of Russia and enemy of so many more, was murdered on 30 December 1916 – (17 December in the old calendar). As a follow up to my post a couple of weeks ago, here is how the Empress expressed her fears in a letter, the
I recently attended the Chanel exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Despite whatever opinion you might have of Coco Chanel, her designs were both elegant and timeless. And they were beautifully made. But as I walked around the exhibition, I remembered that my great-aunt Ella, my maternal grandmother’s sister
Empress Alexandra, wife of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, wrote frequently to her husband, numbering each of her letters. Several years ago, at a second hand book stall, I found a book of her letters, written between 1914 and 1916. It is called Letters of the Tsaritsa to