Stephanie Williams

This Month, we invited our group of the month, the Molesey Book Club from Surrey, to ask several questions to Stepanie Williams, author of the profoundly moving Olga's Story.

The wonderful descriptive passages of terrain, lifestyle & people were superbly drawn.  Did the author visit all the places herself?

Yes, I made a point of visiting all the places that featured in Olga’s life except for Vladivostok, which was a closed city at the time that I was able to get to Siberia. I lived in Hong Kong for three years and was able to travel to Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin before all the recent changes have swept away so many old buildings, and was able to see where she had lived.  I loved the landscapes in Siberia, and collected as many details of everyday life that I could.  Whenever I travel I always keep a diary, and in Siberia especially I tried to record everything I could of what I saw around me, from the quality of the light, to the state of the weather, the trees, plants and birds – and the sound of things like church bells – which sound much more primitive and not nearly as melodic as they do in England.  I also read everything I could get my hands on – newspapers, travel accounts and memoirs -- that described the places and the way of life in Siberia during the time she lived there.

Did she research all the areas in the book or did Olga herself describe them so vividly that Irina was able to pass the word pictures on to her daughter?

Olga described most of the key scenes in the book to me herself; others my mother or my father remembered.  I found as I was writing   that when you have heard stories over and over again from the time you were a child that pictures do form in your mind, and these are what I have used in the book.  Scenes can never be described by anyone exactly as they happened – no two witnesses can ever tell exactly the same story – my intention was to be true to the spirit of what Olga had told me, and to evoke the atmosphere of what happened.

Did Olga finally lead a happy life?

A tricky question.  I do believe that she found peace and contentment in Oxford – and she never lost her capacity for laughter and gaiety. She had a lovely garden, and many close friends who she loved dearly – and who looked after her.  But there is no doubt that at times she found life difficult.  Although she had come to some kind of understanding with Fred that made it possible for them to live together, Fred was very jealous of any contact she had with Irina, and this pained her. As she reached her seventies she would hark back to the past in Russia, which is why I was able to find out so much about her. Ultimately, however, I think she was reconciled to the fact that she would never know what happened to them.

Were any more "lost" friends discovered later?

Absolutely – and the coincidences are uncanny. Someone has just written to me from Australia identifying the unknown woman in photograph 27 as her grandmother, who, it turns out, studied law with Olga in Vladivostok! While doing my research, a Russian friend introduced me to Natalya Brann’s daughter, who after an extraordinary escape from China in 1950 is now to be found living in San Francisco. Through another friend I discovered that Bryantzeff’s son, Harry Rose, was living in London. Over lunch he told me how his mother had always blamed Olga for the breakdown of her marriage. More surprises were in store when I learned that Harry’s son was Stuart Rose, now Chief Executive of Marks and Spencer – a man with whom my husband had often done business. More than that, Harry’s grandson is a good friend of my son’s.

Did Stephanie work solidly on the book for 10 years?

No. In September 1993 I took a year off work to learn Russian and go to Siberia. I had hoped that I would come back from my trip with enough information to write a travel book, or perhaps a book about my quest to find out the truth about Olga, but I didn’t. So I got a job running a charity, and forgot about Olga for a while. Then the Internet opened up. I managed to find a brilliant researcher in St Petersburg who began making inquiries in the Russian archives for me. Gradually she turned up all kinds of details about the family, and the background to the community in Kyakhta. Meanwhile, the materials I had brought back from my trip to Siberia, such as Communist accounts of the civil war, began to make sense. In my spare time I started reading everything I could find in libraries in England. By 2001 realised I had just enough material to begin to think about writing a book about her life – something I had never imagined I would do. I started writing the book full time in 2002.

It was interesting to see how her experiences “shaped” Olga. She was a strong woman but didn’t appear to be kind or very sympathetic. What sort of Grandmother was she?

No, it’s true, she wasn’t very cuddly! When I was small she was quite sharp, and very definite with her views – she made it clear that however tough you were finding things, what she had had to go through had been much tougher. Having said that, she despised any form of self pity, and I never once had the sense that she felt sorry for herself. Once I grew up I found her a great companion - interested in everything and everyone, and extremely wise about life.