![]() After their father abdicated, they left the grand palaces, but in exile they remained cooped up inside houses, reading and going for walks in gardens. For aside from a stint Tatiana and Olga spent working as nurses during World War I, the sisters remained segregated from the worst excesses of Russian reality almost until the very end of their lives. In Four Sisters, however, acclaimed biographer Helen Rappaport, puts them centre stage and offers readers the most authoritative account yet of the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. ![]() A striking feature of the book is how relatively sheltered the sisters’ lives remained even after the Russian Revolution. It’s as if 100 years from now an author were to collate contemporary news reports about Prince William, Kate Middleton and their son into an epic tome viewing early 21st century history from the point of view of regal domesticity.īut it’s not all pointless. There is a lot more of this in the book, a great accumulation of it. We also learn that on a trip to England in 1910, Olga and Tatiana bought some postcards and also “treated themselves to some perfume from Beken & Son’s pharmacy.” ![]() ![]() Maria and Anastasia, however - gasp - wore their hair down. How unscintillating are the details Rappaport includes? We learn that at a ball given on her 16th birthday, Olga wore her hair up, as did her sister Tatiana. ![]()
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