Maria Fairweather Biography

Born in Tehran in 1943 of  mixed   Greek and Russian parentage, Maria Fairweather was educated in England, taking joint First class  honours in Russian and History at UCL SSEES as a mature student. Marrying early into the Diplomatic Service and embarking on a peripatetic life, she made use of her prodigious linguistic talents by becoming an interpreter at the European  Commission- translating from French, Italian , Greek and Russian into English. She also worked for Mrs Thatcher and other  British ministers.

 

En poste in Rome in the 1990s and resident at the Villa Wolkonsky as the wife of the British Ambassador, she published her first book : The Pilgrim  Princess: A Life of Zinaida Volkonsky ( Constable & Robinson ) in 1999.  This was followed  in 2005 by  her critically acclaimed biography of Madame de Stael ( Constable and Robinson ) .Fairweather was working on a family memoir at the time of her death in 2010.