Felix Yusupov is a figure I've long known about due to his links to the Imperial family and Rasputin, but I've just started reading his memoir Lost Splendour (after picking it up by chance in a charity shop) and I'm finding it an absolute delight. It's incredibly vivid and he has a real talent for communicating the sensory nature of his past experiences; his account is obviously very selective and romanticised, but I really don't mind in the slightest. As a work of imaginative autobiography it's extremely impressive and a completely gripping read that brings the places and people of the era to life in a way I've never come across before. I've read the memoirs of Maria Pavlovna (the younger) and Marie of Romania, and while they're both interesting they're simply not as gripping or visceral as Lost Splendour.
Can anyone recommend any other colourful memoirs along the lines of Lost Splendour? I'd be particularly interested in reading recollections of high society living in Russia prior to the last decades of the empire, going back to the 18th century.
(There was another thread on the book, but it hadn't been touched in nearly 10 years and I felt a new thread was probably appropriate!)
