A grand evening reception in honour of Marina at Buckingham Palace. More than 800 guests, including all heads of mission. On top of that, a whole ‘brigade’ of royalties – the entire royal family (the king

King George V of Great Britain, 1910–36.

and queen,

Victoria Mary, queen consort of King George V, 1910–36.

the prince of Wales, the duke of York

Prince Albert, later King George VI.

and his wife, the duke of Kent, the younger son John, the so-called ‘princess royal’, i.e. the king’s daughter, together with her husband; only the duke of Gloucester

Prince Henry William, duke of Gloucester, third son of King George V.

was absent – he’s currently in Australia), as well as the king of Denmark

King Christian X of Denmark, 1912–47.

and his wife, the king of Norway

King Haakon VII of Norway (born Christian Frederik), 1905–57.

and his wife, Prince Regent Paul of Yugoslavia,

Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, prince regent of Yugoslavia, 1934–41; deposed in a coup d’état after he signed the agreement on Yugoslavia’s access to the Axis in March 1941.

Princess Juliana of Holland

Princess Juliana van Oranje-Nassau; queen of the Netherlands, 1948–80.

(the heiress), and so on. There was also a great quantity of grand princes of various nationalities, including Kirill Vladimirovich Romanov

Kirill Vladimirovich Romanov, Russian grand duke; assumed the titular Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, 1924–38, being next in line to the throne following the murder of the tsar’s family.

(‘Emperor of All Russia’!) accompanied by his wife and daughter Kira,

Grand Duchess Kira Kirillovna, second daughter of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia.

who was one of the eight bridesmaids. Add to that an endless number of princesses (Greek, Yugoslav, and others)…

The procedure: all the ambassadors and envoys of the countries whose heads were present at the wedding formed a semicircle according to seniority in the round hall of the palace, while the remaining envoys and chargés d’affaires were put in the adjoining long hall. Representatives of the English nobility and the upper bourgeoisie were gathered in groups in the other rooms. A long and dazzling cavalcade of royalties emerged from the corner room adjacent to the round hall. First, the British king and queen passed along a line of ambassadors and wives, shaking hands with all of them and exchanging a few pleasantries with some chosen guests. Among the latter were our doyen (by virtue of his rank) and Matsudaira (the English are scared of the Japanese!). The royal couple passed from the round hall to the adjoining room, where the envoys were, but they did not pause there before individual diplomats, confining themselves to general bows to the right and to the left. Foreign royal couples (Danish, Norwegian, etc.) followed their example, as did members of the British royal family. They all shook hands with us and smiled politely… Actually, that’s not quite true: there were exceptions. Marina’s mother demonstratively walked past Agniya and me without greeting us. Well, we’ll get by in this world without her handshakes! Two or three wizened old witches, ugly as sin, came out of the corner room and hesitated, whispering secretively and glancing in our direction, before deciding to proceed directly to the envoys’ room, bypassing the line of ambassadors. The Soviet ambassador had given them a fright! There were also some ladies and gentlemen decorated with ribbons and diadems, who stumbled at the sight of me and immediately backed off every which way. That must have been Kirill and his retinue. On the whole, my presence at the royal reception was an unpleasant disappointment for a certain group of guests. The Lithuanian (Balutis)

Bronius Kazys Balutis, Lithuanian ambassador in Washington, 1928–33, and in London from 1934.

told me that, standing in the envoys’ room, he’d overheard a conversation in Russian: ‘Look, there’s Maisky over there,’ said a grey-haired gentleman with a long moustache, pointing at me from a distance.

His neighbour, a younger gentleman, glanced in my direction and uttered angrily: ‘Now there’s a son of a bitch!’

He said this with great feeling and irritation… Indeed, the passions engendered by our revolution have not yet cooled. Their echoes resound even in the halls of Buckingham Palace.

Leaving the diplomatic corps behind, the long line of royalties sailed off down the halls and enfilades of the palace, greeting everyone and gracing the chosen few with some conversation. Meanwhile, the ambassadors began to talk to one another.

‘What happens next?’ Agniya asked a Spanish lady, who scoffed and replied sarcastically: ‘Next? The usual merry-go-round.’

Dino Grandi, the Italian, declared defiantly: ‘I’m off to bed!’

He really did disappear early, at the first opportunity.

The Bulgarian (Khadzhi-Mishiyev) assumed an elegiac tone and began to philosophize: ‘What splendour! What riches! We haven’t had such an extravagant gathering of royalties for many years! Yet there’s a whiff of the past about it all…’

‘Don’t you think,’ I responded, ‘that the British court is the last splendid court left in Europe? It’s an interesting historical relic that has survived to this day thanks to an array of specific circumstances.’

‘You are quite right,’ the Bulgarian replied. ‘Here, in London, we have probably the last major royal court, which traces its line back to Charles I and Louis XIV.’

The king approached Baldwin and began to speak to him. I don’t know what they were talking about, since I was standing too far away, but I couldn’t help observing them. The king – short, balding, frail, his arms almost straight down by his sides – moved his lips slowly and, bending slightly forward, gazed ingratiatingly at the Conservative leader. Baldwin – solidly built with a paunch, red hair and a confident grinning face – was leaning back arrogantly and listening to the king in a calm and somewhat majestic manner. First he stood akimbo, then he unceremoniously scratched the back of his head, before finally folding his arms across his fat chest. The king just talked on and on… Observing the scene, one was apt to ask: ‘Which of the two is the master?’ It certainly didn’t seem to be the king.

‘I’ve just had a real fight with Kira!’ she exclaimed with great enthusiasm.

‘Over what?’ I inquired.

‘Well, naturally, over the USSR! I was trying to prove to her that she is wrong and that you, bloody Bolsheviks, are good people.’

‘I can imagine the impression that made on Kira!’ I chuckled.

‘Don’t laugh!’ Lady Astor flared up. Whereupon, she took me by the arm and dragged me after her, saying: ‘Come on, I’ll introduce you to Kira. She wants to see you!’…

It was with some difficulty that I succeeded in extracting myself and vanishing in the crowd.

What a crazy woman!

Relations between Maisky and Lady Astor, though often contentious, remained courteous and correct right up until his departure from England. Their intimate correspondence suggests, though, that the relationship was also mutually beneficial. There were only a few people whom Maisky would address as he did her – ‘My dear Lady Astor’ – or whose company he would seek thus: ‘It is a long, long time since my wife and I saw you last and it would be so nice if you could lunch with us one day … We shall be so glad to hear that you can come on one of these days.’

Astor papers, 1416/1/2/144, 21 May 1934; see also Astor papers, 1416/1/2/145, 161 & 223, 14 June 1935, 6 July 1936 & 4 Sep. 1942.

Even after the Munich Agreement was signed, Maisky continued to court Lady Astor, though by then he would be mostly interested in gleaning from her the ‘secrets’ of Cliveden.

Astor papers, 1416/1/2/188, 28 Nov. 1938.

Indeed, Time magazine reported from London in 1939 that ‘The Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky even had lunch at the London house of Lady Astor, hostess of the famed appeasement-favoring Cliveden Set.’

Time magazine, 3 April 1939.

Years later, Lady Astor would vividly recall the presence of Maisky at Cliveden, ‘because he made such a terrific noise eating his food’.

Hansard, HC Deb 7 March 1950, vol. 472, col. 257.

Maisky did not even flinch from participating in her infamous ‘musical chairs’, though when the German ambassador was present at one such event he did not fulfil the hopes of those present ‘of seeing those two scrabbling for the last chair’.

Page 411

N. Rose (ed.), Baffy: The diaries of Blanche Dugdale, 1936–1947 (London, 1973), p. 9.

The relationship was as beneficial for Lady Astor herself. As soon as Maisky left the room, following a lunch given by her in his honour shortly after Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, the hostess told the other guests: ‘Of course I hate the Russians, but I’ve got to be nice to that little man because he may become our ally in the war.’

K. Martin, Editor (London, 1968), II, p. 141.

After the German attack on Russia, Lady Astor wrote to Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright, dramatist, critic and socialist; member of the Executive Committee of the Fabian Society, 1885–1911; journalist and art critic to Pall Mall Gazette, 1885–88, The Star, 1888–90, The World, 1890–94, Saturday Review, 1895–98; winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. Continued to write plays throughout the 1930s, including On the Rocks (1933), The Millionairess (1934), Geneva (1936) and In Good King Charles’s Golden Days (1939). A close friend of the Maiskys.

(with whom she enjoyed a close relationship, regardless of the fact that they were poles apart politically) that she was ‘on the most cordial terms with the Maiskys’.

J.P. Wearing (ed.), Bernard Shaw and Nancy Astor (Toronto, 2005), p. 96, and a letter in this vein to Charlotte F. Shaw, 13 Sep. 1941, p. 97. This is attested by other observers, such as Stephen Duggan, A Professor at Large (London, 1943), pp. 205–6. On the visit by Shaw and the Astors to Moscow, see Maisky’s diary entry of 5 April 1940.

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