21 February/6 March 1914

The wind is howling with such force that even Papa decided not to go out into the teeth of the storm.

Instead, when lessons were finished this morning, Mama allowed me to come to her boudoir to paint. She says I’m like my aunt Olga in my talent with pens and brushes. It’s very cosy here. Everywhere you look are vases filled with flowers from the greenhouses in the imperial park.

When they were first married, Mama and Papa lived with Grandmother in St Petersburg. Later, they moved here to Tsarskoe Selo, which means “the Tsar’s Village”. There are two palaces, and we live in the smaller one, the Alexander Palace. It has over one hundred rooms. (The Catherine Palace, which I can see from Mama’s window, has more than two hundred.) I haven’t even been in them all. In one wing of Alexander are the apartments of all Mama’s ladies-in-waiting, like Baroness Buxhoeveden, and Papa’s suite of aides, and other people who help us, like Alexei’s doctors.

In the center section are the official rooms where Papa receives important visitors. The halls are very long – I once tried roller-skating in one of them, but they are made of marble, and my skates made such a clatter that people came rushing out to see what was going on. From every ceiling hang enormous chandeliers that must be cleaned, one little crystal at a time. It takes a lot of people to keep the chandeliers sparkling!

Our rooms are in a separate wing, which Mama has fixed up nicely, like an English cottage, she says. Here in her boudoir the walls are covered with icons, beautiful Russian paintings of religious figures, and the portrait of Queen Victoria looking very stern – not at all like our grandmother, the dowager empress, who is very gay and witty.