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
On 17 December 1837, the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, Russia, burst into flame. Almost as soon as the last embers ceased to burn, Tsar Nicholas I started to plan the rebuilding of this remarkable structure, hoping the new palace would wipe the memory of this disaster from the minds
Last year, I wrote this post about four ways to research your family history. This week I discovered the limitations of research while I was writing an essay for my study. The task was to write a short narrative on a person, place, time or event, using techniques based on
Either late on the night of 16 July, or early in the morning of 17 July 1918, Tsar Nicholas II, his wife the Empress Alexandra, their four daughters; Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia, and the heir to the throne, Tsarevich Alexei, were ordered to dress and go down to the
With the 100th anniversary of the death of the Romanovs approaching next month, my thoughts have been more and more on the Russian side of my family; my mother’s family. My grandmother’s family were Russian aristocrats. As a young lady, she became a Maid of Honour to the Empress Alexandra