Marie 'Missie' Vassiltchikov - later Mrs Peter Harnden - was born in St Petersburg in 1917, the fourth child of Prince and Princess Illarion Vassiltchikov. The family left Russia in 1919, and Missie grew up in Germany, France and Lithuanian, where her father's family had owned property before the Revolution. After the war she lived in France, Spain and England. She died in London in 1978.
Quite simply, one of the most extraordinary war diaries ever written. Innocent and knowing at once, it portrays the death of Old Europe through the eyes of a beautiful young aristocrat whose world itself is dying with the events that she describes -- John le Carre Written with a vividness, detail, understanding and humanity that rank it beside Pepys on the Great Fire -- Bernard Levin * Observer * A fascinating insight into a circle whose independence of mind could not be crushed by totalitarianism, Soviet or Nazi * Financial Times * A remarkable historical document of the first importance -- A.J.P. Taylor