Woronoff / Voronov

Blogs which describe people or events related to my maternal line.

Her hat making trial was a good idea but soon failed!

My grandmother, Olga Woronoff, was elegant, fashionable and loved her hats. By the looks of it she owned a few! The photos above show her wearing some of them. My grandmother, her husband Paul Woronoff and her sister Tata, made their escape from Russia on board the British ship “Hanover,”

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And After That, She Never Learnt to Drive

I never saw my grandmother get behind the wheel of a car. Whenever we went out as a family, she always sat in the front passenger’s seat, no matter who was driving. It was a matter of respect. As the matriarch of the family, she sat in the front. Once,

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Shocked at her death, they prayed

I was excited to receive an email from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives last week. They were advising me that the order I had placed was ready to be accessed and downloaded and, as I clicked on the link, I reflected on what I was about to read. I

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Enough doom and gloom – Let’s head to the beach!

I have had enough doom and gloom for now! So here is a happy snap of my grandparents sunning themselves on Juno Beach, Florida in 1959. At this point in time they did not even realise they were going to be grandparents! Sometime while they were soaking in the sun

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Horrified and indignant, but should she have judged?

Every country lays claims to having great artists and performers and Russia is no exception. One of the most influential and talented singers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Russia was Feodor (Fyodor) Chaliapin. He has been described as having both an imposing figure and voice, with

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Tumultuous times ahead – the days of smooth sailing lost

On 28 June 1914, the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. It was an incident which was to set a chain of events in motion, culminating in World War I. Not quite a month after the assassination, around 20-23 July 1914, the French President, Raymond Poincaré, made an

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