Moura Budberg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Countess, later Baroness, Moura (Maria Ignatievna Zakrevskaya Benckendorff) Budberg (c. 1891 - Nov. 1974) [1], was the Ukrainian-born wife of Count Djon (Johann) Benckendorff, a high-ranking Czarist diplomat whom she married in 1911. They owned the mansion called Yendel in Jäneda, Estonia where he was shot dead in 1919.

Later she was briefly married to Baron Nikolai von Budberg-Bönningshausen, and was at various times the mistress of Sir R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Russian writer Maxim Gorky and historian and science fiction writer H.G. Wells. She has been called the "Mata Hari of Russia".

Among her many activities, she wrote books and was the 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).^[1]

An MI5 informant said of her "she can drink an amazing quantity, mostly gin".^[2]

She was the great-great aunt of Nick Clegg, the British Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam and, since 18 December 2007, leader of the Liberal Democrats.

[edit] 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 (Time 1/05): Moura Budberg, H.G. Wells, and the Lost World of Yendel. Retrieved on 2006-10-23.
Tweedie, Neil; Day, Peter (November 2002). Baroness warned MI5 about Blunt in 1951. London Telegraph. Retrieved on 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.)