The war in Ukraine has turned my thoughts to my grandmother. Her father’s estates were situated in western Russia, not far from the current border with Ukraine. I remember her telling me how beautiful Kyiv was, so she must have visited it at least once. Recently I again sorted through
On February 14, 1914, my maternal grandparents, Paul and Olga Woronoff (neé Countess Kleinmichel) were married in the Feodorovsky Cathedral in Tsarskoye Selo – I have written about their wedding here and talked about it here on YouTube. So 108 years ago they would have been on their honeymoon. I
This week I began to sort through the numerous photo albums which I inherited. My parents and grandparents, and no doubt other relatives, were very vague with their inscriptions on the photos, if they wrote anything at all. Some are inscribed with random names like “Helen”, or with simply a
On 1 January 1946 my great-grandmother, Catherine Nicolaievna Jakowzoff (formerly Countess Kleinmichel), sent a Christmas / New Year greeting to her granddaughter, my mother. The images of the card and the photo she sent are above. At the time of writing my great-grandmother was 81 and living in France, and
I recently attended the Chanel exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Despite whatever opinion you might have of Coco Chanel, her designs were both elegant and timeless. And they were beautifully made. But as I walked around the exhibition, I remembered that my great-aunt Ella, my maternal grandmother’s sister
I was reminded by the Facebook post in the group “In the Steps of the Romanovs” that Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, eldest daughter of the Tsar Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, was born on 15th November. The Facebook post is linked to Helen Azar’s video about GD Olga’s