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Messages - Janet Ashton

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751
Nicholas II / Re: Did Nicholas II Have any Illegitimate Children
« on: October 11, 2007, 07:06:57 AM »
There is an English translation in the British Library.  You might see if you can get a hold of that.  I will be back in London this coming winter and will ask for it as well. Of course, they will not let me out of the building with it! It would be nice to have a cheap or at least reasonable reproduction of the volumes. But, someone has to pay the big bucks to buy the original to do that.

The BL also has a copy in the lending collection, which you CAN borrow and take home, but I keep it with me as much as possible.  ;D

752
The Windsors / Re: Books on British royalty (non-Tudor)
« on: October 04, 2007, 08:59:13 AM »
I guess sources need to be checked carefully.

Of course they need to be checked. However, even checking sources, as has been pointed out, does not necessarily mean that your work will be error free, because somethimes the sources are themselves in error about a point of fact. Good history writing means footnotes and sources. No need to shudder, people - and no need to fly into a tizzy if a historian makes a mistake. Foot notes and sourcing means that a person can do their own checking on any point they may wish - and even publish their own findings and research.

Since I'm on a roll here, I just want to add a few personal observations about Greg's book on Alix, started when he was thirteen years old and first published when he was twenty five. I don't think it's a perfect book, and there are some minor errors, many of which he subsequently became aware of. (I should add that I perpetuate one small error in an article of mine by deriving information on her reading via Greg from the Mouchanow book; I didn't know that Mouchanow was a dubious source when I wrote the article either and I'm happy to admit to it.)
BUT....hum...just my personal thoughts since I too started writing about Alexandra when I was thirteen, with less ultimate success: I do not believe that *I* could have produced a book of such thought and insight at that age: mine would have been an uncritical hagiography; and in fact it might well have been had I written it at *33* when I rediscovered my interest in Russian history (see my ATR posts from 2001-2 for examples of what I mean).
We all live and learn.....

753
The Windsors / Re: Books on British royalty (non-Tudor)
« on: October 04, 2007, 08:45:22 AM »
I've heard that a Royal writer, who has written many books, only does that, without love for the subject(s) were he writes about. This particular writer, writes on order. His company tells him, about which subject he can write about, put the story line on paper in big lines, and he writes some of the details.


Well, I don't know who you are talking about and wouldn't presume to read your mind or anything, but for the sake of clarity in this thread I should point out that this is not the case with Greg King. Certainly "Twilight of splendor" was commissioned by Wiley as a follow-up to the Russian court book, but Greg has been researching the court of  Queen Victoria since he was a kid - his main focus being arcitectural, actually - he once said to me that his favourite character was Osborne House. So it's the solid background of years of research which enables him to complete a book in a year or so. Same with his current book on the court of Caroline Astor - that draws on material which he laid down years ago in working on different projects. I have been beside him through the writing of both court books as well as the manuscript stage of FOTR and I have seen them progress from chapter outline and proposal (his own) to finished work. The publisher may object and suggest changes to overall focus, but the "storyline" and structure is the author's.

754
The Windsors / Re: Books on British royalty (non-Tudor)
« on: October 04, 2007, 08:33:44 AM »
The inside photos are just as careless.

Ah well, at least one of them is mine, so cheers dude... ;D

755
The Windsors / Re: Books on British royalty (non-Tudor)
« on: October 04, 2007, 06:22:05 AM »

That's right that the cover art is up to the publisher.  Does anyone know if the cover art is actually a mistake?  Or did they knowingly use the painting from the Golden Jubilee on purpose because they thought it just looked better?   They might have felt that the look of the painting overrode the fact that it actually commemorated an earlier Jubilee. 


It was chosen on purpose, by the author, for its visual appeal in giving an image of Queen Victoria's court and family in the latter part of her reign. It is not an error; he knows and presumably the publisher knows when it was painted, and he was not unaware that this choice was likely to be criticised. Or unduly worried.... :D It's just a cover....
 

756
Romanov and Imperial Russia Links / Re: New link
« on: August 25, 2007, 02:34:03 PM »
Oops - in listing from memory by author, I almost forgot our Guest Authors!: -

Two more Atlantis articles: -
 
                             Royal Book News (writing it) by Marlene Eilers Koenig
                             Yusupov v. MGM, by Idris Traylor and Ronald Moe

757
Since the relationship was seen by a woman (Grand Duchess Olga), George may not have gone all the way with the nursemaid. Quite a few female relatives found George to be quite a flirt, including the late Grand Duchess Josephine Charlotte of Luxembourg. Who remember her cousin "Georgi" rather fondly. I think with this we may never know the turth as it was between the two. However due to Princess Marie Bonaparte, it does not seemed likely (at least I am not convinced with whatever evidence we have). It boiles down to what "would have",  "possibily have " or "may have" happened.  :(

I know this thread is quite old, but seeing it and feeling I could add something was one of the reasons I decided to register again on this board:

I wanted to point out that Olga was one year old when George was fourteen. In Vorres rendition of her memoirs she (or Vorres) implies that she heard about the affair with the nursemaid during a visit to Denmark around the time it occurred. This is impossible. I suspect that Olga either heard about it later, or is confusing her Grand Dukes - or Vorres muddled something.....At any rate, as you say, Eric, the affair definitely falls under "may possibly" have occurred.

758
Romanov and Imperial Russia Links / Re: New link
« on: August 24, 2007, 02:05:29 PM »
The website is certainly growing, and currently has the following articles, a mix of new ones and reprints:

New/original to the site: 

         Cragside House, the emblem of the site
         The Imperial hunting lodge in Bialowieza forest, by Greg King and Janet Ashton       
         Reburial of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna: an eyewitness account by Sue Woolmans
         Stalking Count Orlov's trotting horses, (a visit to Moscow in 1989), by Gretchen Haskin
         William Lee remembers Dr Lindsey Hughes, biographer of Peter the Great
         Book reviews: "To kill Rasputin," [by Andrew Cook] reviewed by Greg King
                               "The Many deaths of Tsar Nicholas II," [by Wendy Slater] reviewed by Janet Ashton
         Sue Woolmans' travelogues: lively accounts of visits to the Crimea, Brussels, Mainau, Spain and the
                        Balkans, in search of palaces and exhibitions
         
 
Reprints of Atlantis articles: The Russian obsessions of W.T. Stead, by Janet Ashton
                                       Nicholas II and family in fiction, by Janet Ashton
                                       His brother's keeper, parts one and two [the story of Nicholas Yusupov, Felix Yusupov and Marina de
                                                                                Heyden], by Gretchen Haskin
                                       Vladimir Miatlev, poet and pornographer, parts one and two, by Gretchen Haskin
                                       Resurrection of an imperial jewel (the Church of Christ the Savior), by Greg King
                                       William Howard Russell and the Crimean War, by Ilana Miller
                                       The life of Nikolai Krasnov, architet of the White Palace, Livadia, by Sue Woolmans
                                        Four book reviews by Janet Ashton
 
Reprinted from Davoser Review (i.e. published in English for the first time):
                                       Living and dying in Davos: the end of Dmitri Pavlovich, by William Lee
             
Reprinted from ERHJ, with kind permission of the pblisher:
                                      Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, visits the US in 1860, by Ilana Miller
                                      The Romanovs in Perm, by Katrina Warne

Reprinted from Royalty Digest, with kind permission of the publisher:
 
                                     A royal traveller in Trieste, by Katrina Warne

The reprints are there ether to introduce the author to a larger audience, or to make available material no longer reprinted.
             
It's all at www.directarticle.org, so please pay a visit. I'm aware that people have asked on this board about where they could get Gretchen Haskin's superb Yusupov articles - so please do come along and read them!

JA

759
The author of this book is an academic historian who has worked at Cambridge among other places. The majority of her work has bee about modern Russia, and she approaches Nicholas from taht angle: his role in the post-Soviet collapse and later.

She adopts the fictionalised style of her first chapter in order to provide a thematic introduction to a book which is after all about narratives, but also to make a point about the writing of history generally: that dull or bland styles can provide a sense of false certainty about the past; that is to say, a belief that we "know" what happened. Her account is based on primary evidence and is she says “as accurate as any written in conventional form, in the sense that it is based on the same sources, tested with the same rigour. Yet it questions the false certainties of traditional narrative history, which can never produce a perfectly objective version replicating the events of the past.”

This is an excellent book, well worth the reading.

JA

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