From Russia With Love

At the turn of the last century, the royal families of Britain and Russia were linked by blood and marriage. Martin Williams enjoys this spirited account of their often uneasy relationship

- Michael Wigan

At a time when AngloRussian relations are under intense scrutiny, Frances Welch’s new book is peculiarly relevant. In The Russian Court at Sea, published in 2011, she chronicled the exodus of the surviving Romanovs from a Russia descending into the abyss of the Red terror. Now, she winds back the clock still further, to an era when matters of state were conducted, not only in the chancelleries of Europe, but across the tea tables and aboard the yachts of intertwined royal dynasties.

To the outwardly affectionate and occasionally antagonistic crowned heads who exchanged visits in the pursuit of national interests often inimical to those of their hosts, diplomacy was very much a family affair.

In 1896, in the twilight of her marathon reign, Queen Victoria presided over the largest empire in history. Her grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm II, had ruled Germany since 1888; her beautiful but highly strung granddaughter, Alexandra of Hesse, had married the tsar of Russia in 1894. to claim that Victoria had been dubious about the alliance would be less than truthful. When the engagement was announced, she wrote that ‘the state of Russia is so bad, so rotten, that at any moment something dreadful might happen’.

To Alexandra’s elder sister, she fretted over ‘the awful insecurity to which that sweet child will be exposed… my blood runs cold when I think of her so young… her dear life and, above all, her husband’s so constantly threatened’.

Victoria would never know just how prescient her dire misgivings were. For now, she and her sorely tried courtiers were faced with the prospect of welcoming the new tsar and tsarina, as well as their infant daughter and an army of retainers, to the tartan-draped halls of Balmoral Castle, deep in the Scottish Highlands.