Some of the most difficult decisions I had to make in my life were made in the couple of months after my father died, when I had to sort through the house that he, my mother, my grandmother and I had lived in. If you have read through some of
I have a vague childhood memory of the evenings between Christmas on the 25December and Russian Christmas on the 7 January spent curled up on the sofa next to my mother, who was reading to me from The Nutcracker and The Mouse King. Opposite us was the Christmas tree we
What do a gold mine, a window display and a bookshop have to do with my mother? Well, in 1952, when my parents were living in Colorado Springs, my mother designed a window display for a bookshop which won her the third prize in a nationwide competition. In previous posts
I guess there are many family historians who find strange photographs or documents in the papers they have inherited. I definitely have many photographs which have no details recorded on them and I cannot place, such as the photos in this post from last week. But, amongst the many paper
As the saying goes, school days are the best days of our lives – or are they? I tend to think the days we spend in school are not memorable for the education we receive, but for the friendships we make and the lack of responsibility we have. It is
From the moment I could read and throughout most of my younger years I was a bookworm. I read all day and at night I would hide under the covers and read by torchlight. Books accompanied me everywhere – they sat next to my cereal at breakfast and I would