Always A Grand Duke

by Alexander Mikhailovich

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Genres: Russia

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Grand Duke Alexander Mihailovich of Russia was a naval officer, an author, explorer, the brother-in-law and advisor of Emperor Nicholas II.

Alexander played a major role in the creation of Russian military aviation. He was the initiator of the officer's aviation school near Sevastopol in 1910 and later the chief of the Imperial Russian Air Service during the First World War.

In 1917 he went into exile and wrote his memoirs and became fascinated with archaeology and conducted a number of expeditions.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

About the first volume of his memoirs, Once A Grand Duke, I wrote:

The memoirs of Grand Duke Alexander are without doubt one of the esential first hand accounts of the follie de grandeur which was Romanov Russia. I read this book back in 1976 after purchasing it in a wonderful second hand book shop in Cincinatti, Ohio. Long lost, but never forgotten, like those vanished mid West bookstores stocked with the discarded libraries of well read pre WWII Americans these memoirs are quoted by every historian on pre revolutionary Russia. Rather then read the sentimentalist claptrap of the mountain mediocre 'biographies' of the last of the Romanovs produced by writers who can't even read a foriegn language or figure out how to access an archive. The tale of everything that was good and bad, and there was a lot of bad, is there in these marvellous memoirs.

This second volume of memoirs is as wonderful as the first because Alexander was so marvellous a rogue. It doesn't have the historical importance of his first but it is wonderful on life in exile and the changing world of post WWI Europe.

Well worth reading.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting sequel to Sandro’s first memoir - Once a Grand Duke. This volume focuses on his years in exile with quite a bit of detail of his time in America on the lecture circuit. I was not very interested in this section as it focused a lot on how stupid Americans are (I am not offended by my countrymen being portrayed in this way, but I don’t need to be reminded). A lot of his lecture on tour was on spiritualism, which he also did a chapter on. For more interesting we’re his stories of eeking out a living, dealing with his fellow exile family members. He wrote an interesting - although almost completely factually inaccurate - account of the last decade of his mother in laws life with her sister Queen Alexandra of England.

[Yooperprof · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chatty and engaging. More indiscreet than many Royal memoirs of the time. Interesting recollections of his mother-in-law, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, and her sister Queen Alexandra.