After a dozen or so years in New York, we felt the time had come to make a choice between the United States and Europe. We chose our continent. Our decision was aided by an event that changed all the rule: the fall of the Soviet Union. Personally, I was shocked. I never thought the…
Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna as a child, the Future Duchess of Edinburgh Maria Alexandrovna was the daughter of Tsar Alexander II and his first wife. She married Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Queen Victoria. The queen opposed the marriage. She hated the Russians, both for their status as international political rivals…
Emperor Alexander of Russia was the uncle of Queen Olga of Greece. Pushed by his brother Constantine, the Tsar sought to liberalize Russia, with the goal of producing a constitution. It was a race against time; the Tsar knew anarchists and terrorists were targeting him. There had already been one bombing attempt in the dining…
No country gives me the impression of being an empire quite like Russia does. Moscow, where I recently traveled for the first time in many years, is the capital of an immense and powerful empire, the vital center of which is the Kremlin, as it has been for centuries. I had imagined that after the…
The patron of the epoch who built the grandest palaces was without a doubt Catherine II of Russia. With unlimited resources at her disposal, she could build colossal homes, grander than all the palaces of Europe. In fact, Catherine was only imitating her predecessor, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, daughter of Peter the Great. The latter was…