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.
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