Grandparents

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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The Tsar and the Imperial Family attended their wedding

A couple of weeks ago I made a video about the wedding of my maternal grandparents, Olga and Paul Woronoff, for the YouTube channel “In the Steps of the Romanovs” created by Helen Azar. Helen has translated and published the diaries of the Grand Duchesses, and has found a few

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The Woman Carrying Two Giant Easter Eggs

Among the many postcards my mother and grandparents collected over the years is one which definitely speaks of Easter (pictured above). It is of a lady dressed colourfully, with a small red hat on her dark brown hair, an upturned collar and what looks like a green scarf tied around

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Sick and Desperate: no hospital would admit her

Surrounded by panic about the spread of Covid-19, what better way to spend an afternoon than researching my grandmother’s experience with disease during the Russian Revolution. I turned to her book, Upheaval, to find out how she was affected. She is not the best at recording dates, but I can

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No Delay – Met in October and Married in January

My parents were married at 2pm on 21 January 1951, at the Russian Eastern Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension, in New York City. The wedding reception was held immediately afterward on Park Avenue, at the home of my grandparents. It was a Sunday. The day was fair, although windy and

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