The Kirov Trilogy Part 2: Fleur

Three dramatic stories about the fictional Kirov family, set against the vivid, exotic and sometimes brutal history of Imperial Russia of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Click to view family tree

Begins: 1851
Period: The Crimean War

Fleur Hamilton, intelligent, independent, sensible, is much courted but never won. She believes herself to be completely level-headed, but as an unmarried Victorian female she is utterly innocent about love and the ways of men.

Visiting St Petersburg with her father, she meets Count Sergei Kirov. He puzzles as much as he excites her – a vibrant, attractive, yet enigmatic man, with a tragic secret in his past. In the gilded splendour of this loveliest of cities, she falls in love with him, and with the mystical and barbaric beauty of his country. But England and Russia are on the brink of war with each other – and Kirov is on the brink of a marriage of convenience with the daughter of Fleur’s host.

From the sophistication of Imperial Petersburg to the rustic simplicity of the Crimea; from elegant house parties to the agony and squalor of besieged Sebastopol; Fleur follows her heart. Through passion, betrayal and suffering, she seeks to unravel the mystery of Kirov, and to understand what it is that binds the threads of her life so closely to his.