Grigory Orlov was a dashing officer from a Russian aristocratic family. The Grand Duchess Catherine Alexeievna fell in love with him. Both mistrusted and beloved by the reigning Empress Elizabeth, neglected by her husband the Grand Duke Peter heir to the throne, isolated in a Court where she knew few people, she was in a…
While I was writing my book on Russian Imperial Palaces, we dined, my editor and I, in Saint Petersburg with a handful of curators from the Hermitage. As always, a Russian-style diner, very joyful with lots of drinking, and, also in Russian-style, the conversation soon fell onto one of their favourite subject: ghosts. And so…
The audience was restricted: Dorothy and I, her brother, Mr. Benjamin and the Cannon couple. The room to which we were shown had all the usual accessories: a water basin, a guitar, aluminium trumpets. We turned off the lights and almost immediately the medium fell into a trance. In total darkness, we heard quiet rustling…
Since the discovery of DNA, there is no more Anastasia mystery, as it was immediately proven, without a shadow of a doubt, that Mrs Anderson ¬who pretended to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, youngest daughter of Nicholas II, survivor of the Yekaterinburg massacre – had nothing to do with her. Long before the war, my…
At the time, I worked in the National Archives of the Russian State, in an immense sinister building, badly lit but redeemed by the boundless kindness of the employees. We discussed my family with these extraordinarily cultivated ladies. I told them about the four brothers of my grandmother Queen Olga. “No, one of them said…
Emperor Alexander III of Russia inspects an honor guard with his son, the future Nicholas II. Alexander III proved to be a good father, loved by his children and his nephews, my father foremost among them. Did he know that his successor was too weak for the position? In any case, he raised his son for…
My great-grandmother, Grand Duchess Alexandra Iosifovna, was partially paralyzed late in her life. She was confined to moving around in a wheelchair, but maintained a grand appearance all the same. She is pictured here in the park of her enchanting home, Pavlosk Palace. This photograph was taken by my grandmother Olga of Russia. She…
Mother and daughter, Grand Duchess Alexandra Iosifovna, one of the grandest beauties of the Imperial family, and her daughter Olga, a gentle, lovable, smiling, and generous child destined to become a very popular Queen of Greece. My great-grandmother, Grand Duchess Alexandra Iosifovna of Russia, born Princess of Saxe-Altenbourg, with her two eldest children, Olga,…
Princess Alexandra was the eldest daughter of King George I and Queen Olga, and married Grand Duke Paul of Russia. She died at 22, during childbirth, leaving behind two children, Dimitri and the subject of this photograph, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna the Younger. Maria was partly raised by her grandparents in Russia. She is pictured…
The Baroness Buxhoeveden once shared with me from her passionate memory an extravagant anecdote. She was a child, and still living with her grandfather in the country near the Volga. “I often rode the pony that my grandfather gave to me. He was incredibly fast. One autumn day, when I was only six years old,…