The Red Princess by Sofka Zinovieff

The "red princess" is the author's grandmother, also called Sofka, who was born into the highest circles of the Russian aristocracy in 1907, when the imperial capital St Petersburg was enjoying its "last mad flowering before it was all swept away by war and revolution". On her mother's side, Sofka was a direct descendant (though on the wrong side of the blanket) from Catherine the Great - and her detractors would later claim that she had inherited some of Catherine's less admirable traits - while her father was a member of one of the oldest Russian families. After the revolution, there was no place for such people, and the 11-year-old Sofka left Russia in the company of the Empress Dowager.

For a while, she was educated in England, but then suddenly swept off by her grandmother to Rome. This was the start of a repeating pattern: each time she attained a degree of stability and happiness, it would be snatched from her. Nevertheless, she built a life for herself that included lovers, marriage, children, more lovers, divorce and work - including as secretary to Laurence Olivier. Then came another great dislocation, due to the Second World War.

In the wrong place at the wrong time - Paris at the start of the German occupation - Sofka was separated from husband (her second, whom she adored) and children (whom she adored less), and interned for more than three years. Her husband, an RAF gunner, was shot down during massive raids over Cologne. Her only partial recovery from bereavement was aided by a relationship with another internee, a Polish Jew to whom she referred as "Darling". When Darling was taken away to certain death in the camps, Sofka was again heartbroken, with the added burden of survivor's guilt.

Sofka always ploughed her own furrow, but her family must have felt horribly betrayed when she joined the Communist Party. She did this out of conviction, and went on to conduct tourist visits to Leningrad, where she delighted in amazing both foreigners and Russians by showing them where she had lived as a child.

Sofka Zinovieff is an intelligent and sensitive guide through her grandmother's story, skilfully maintaining a balance between affection and detachment. This was a life fully lived. "All my young years," wrote the princess when she was 50, "I was groping and searching and did discover that the more you give away of yourself, the richer life becomes".