Simon Sebag Montefiore

A bolt from the blue

The memoirs of the Grand Duchess Olga are an entertaining record for anyone interested in the imperial family’s home life during the last years of Russian autocracy.

The memoirs of the Grand Duchess Olga are an entertaining record for anyone interested in the imperial family’s home life during the last years of Russian autocracy.

The memoirs of the Grand Duchess Olga are an entertaining record for anyone interested in the imperial family’s home life during the last years of Russian autocracy.

Olga was the youngest of Alexander III’s six children; her mother was the Danish princess, Maria Fyodorovna. She was born just after her father’s accession, in 1882, when the throne was already in crisis. Her memoirs are suffused with a sort of distant innocence that has great charm, but one longs for a bit more: she gives a child’s, and then a woman’s, viewpoint, which contains little political information or even gossip; but she is modest, intelligent and observant, and provides a valuable insight into a vanished world.

Her eldest brother, the future Nicholas II, was 14 years her senior. The next son, Alexander, died in infancy of meningitis, and the third, George, suffered from TB and spent much time in the Caucausus where the air was said to be good for his lungs. He too died tragically young. There was a sister, Xenia, whose fascinating diaries are also published. And there was Michael, close to Olga both in age and emotionally, but destined to have a highly unsatisfactory career, marrying inappropriately and succeeding to the throne for one day after Nicholas’ abdication.

Olga was adored by her giant of a father, who, after his own father, the Tsar-Liberator Alexander II was assassinated, followed policies of rigid repression. But here we see him in a different light, both playful and loving.

The book contains some vivid scenes: Olga was involved in a train crash, with many casualties, and recounts all the shock and terror she felt.

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