- Moura Budberg
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Moura (Maria Ignatievna) Zakrevskaya, variously Countess Benckendorff and Baroness Budberg (ca. 1891 - Nov. 1974) was the daughter of Ignaty Platonovitch Zakrevsky (1841-1905), a Russian nobleman. She first married Count Johann von Benckendorff, a high-ranking Czarist diplomat, in 1911. They owned the mansion called Jendel in Jäneda, in Estonia where he was shot dead in 1919 (by a peasant). Later, she was briefly married to Baron Nikolai von Budberg-Bönningshausen.
She was the mistress of Sir R. H. Bruce Lockhart, who mentions her, under her given name, in his book Memoirs of a Secret Agent. She also had relationships with Russian writer Maxim Gorky and historian and science fiction writer H.G. Wells.[1] Widely suspected of being a double-agent for both the Soviet Union and British intelligence, she has been called the "Mata Hari of Russia".
Among her many activities, she wrote books, and was the script writer for at least two films: Three Sisters directed by Laurence Olivier and John Sichel (1970), and The Sea Gull directed by Sidney Lumet (1968).[2][3]
An MI5 informant said of her, "she can drink an amazing quantity, mostly gin".[4]
Moura Budberg's older half-sister, Alexandra ‘Alla’ Ignatievna Zakrevskaya (1884-1960), who married Baron Arthur von Engelhardt before 1909, was the great-grandmother of Nick Clegg, leader of the British Liberal Democratic Party since December 2007, and Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 2010.
External links
- Berberova, Nina (June 2005). Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg. New York Review Books Classics. ISBN 1-59017-137-3.
- Sander, Gordon. "Estonia Lost and Found: Moura Budberg, H.G. Wells, and the Lost World of Yendel (Estonian Air 1/05)". http://sandermedia.com/article.php?p=1301. Retrieved 2009-10-22.
- Tweedie, Neil; Day, Peter (November 2002). "Baroness warned MI5 about Blunt in 1951". London Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2002%2F11%2F28%2Fnpro528.xml. Retrieved 2006-10-23.
- Budberg, Moura; Williams-Ellis, Amabel (August 1991). Russian Fairy Tales (Audio Cassette). HarperCollins Canada / Hus Kids Audio. ISBN 1-55994-399-8.
- The Murder of Maxim Gorky. A Secret Execution by Arkady Vaksberg. (Enigma Books: New York, 2007. ISBN 978-1-929631-62-9.)
References
- ^ Burris, Charles (2007-08-01) Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal: An Annotated Bibliographic Guide, LewRockwell.com
- ^ Internet Movie Database
- ^ Filmography - Retrieved on 2006-10-23
- ^ "Mosley was tracked by MI5". BBC News. 2002-11-28. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/uk_news/2518271.stm. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
Categories:- 1890s births
- 1974 deaths
- Russian nobility
- Year of birth uncertain
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