Rasputin was this Russian monk who, having been introduced to the last emperor Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, proved to be the only one capable of calming the terrible haemophiliac episodes of the heir Grand-Duke, the young Alexis. This allowed him to gain absolute control over the parents of the unfortunate child, to…
When Kerensky had seized power in Russia during the Revolution of February 1917, he had interned the tsar, the tsarina and their five children in the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo. He had tried to send the prisoners to England, but King George V, first cousin of Nicholas II and first cousin of the Empress,…
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…
Princess Francoise and me at the photographer’s in Tanger Once a week, my mother, and often with me in tow, would take an old green coach nicknamed the Valanciana in Tanger to attend political meetings, tea parties with some friends and run errands. During one of those visits, she took us to the photographer’s to…
In the winter of 1711, neither France nor Louis XIV was faring very well. Frost was destroying the crops, it was so cold that people were dying in the streets, the Spanish War of Succession had been dragging on for over ten years, there was no more money, no more troupes, no more resources, no…
My mother’s first cousin, the Duke of X, was as charming as he was jovial. During the Second World War, like so many Frenchmen, he and his whole family sought refuge in the family castle in the country. At that time, the question of where the ingredients and foods that appeared on the table came…