A year ago the 2nd ed of Upheaval was about to be launched and I was suffering from anxiety. Although I don’t mind speaking in front of people, no matter how many, I’m not the sort of person who enjoys visibility. I much prefer working in the background, doing the
Have you tried to research your family history, only to find dead ends? Have you tried to build your family tree but only managed to find rabbit holes? Believe me, I’ve been there many times. When I began to look deeper into my grandmother’s memoir Upheaval, which was first published
Revisiting a post from 2020: My grandmother did not spend her last Easter in Russia at the beautiful Assumption Cathedral in Novorossiysk (pic above) but she did help decorate it on the Saturday afternoon before Easter, as described in her book, Upheaval. She was in Novorossiysk in the spring of
Count Pyotr Kleinmichel is one ancestor I’m not proud of. He’s my maternal 2 x great grandfather and, if you have read the 2nd edition of Upheaval, you will know that my grandmother had only good things to say about him. But she didn’t do the research I did! I
I believe my maternal grandparents, Olga and Paul Woronoff, never saw the revolution coming, and they certainly didn’t think the turmoil, violence and bloodshed would last. Coming closely on the heels of World War I, it must have been a time of such uncertainty but even so, in their minds,
OK, I’ve stolen part of the quote by Sarah J Maas, an American fantasy author. The full quote is “Libraries were full of ideas – perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.” How true that is! After all it was said by Edward Bulwer-Lytton that “the pen is