FeaturesHistory

Brooches for Pollie: The Tsarina's gifts to her friend

An exquisite gold, sapphire and diamond brooch crafted in St Petersburg was consigned to auction in October 2018. I had first encountered it as a personal gift from Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918) to the friend of her youth, Marion Louisa ‘Pollie’ Delmé-Radcliffe, Baroness Ungern-Sternberg whose touching connection I explored in a short article for my Royal Central blog back in…
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FeaturesHistory

A Pearl Earring and Imperial Russia

Displayed as part of the London Science Museum’s exhibition on the Russian Imperial Family, The Last Tsar: Blood and Revolution is a pearl earring. This extraordinarily poignant object has its own silent story to tell, concerning the fate of the Romanovs. Believed to have…
FeaturesHistory

What did the Tsarina read?

A study of the books owned by someone can open a window into their interests, and a royal personage no less so. In so doing, the reading material of the last Empress of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918) charts important events in her life and tells us a lot about what…