The Wykehamist
Igor Vinogradoff( Coll:, 1915-20)
Igor was the son of Sir Paul Vinogradoff, a professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford and a famous historian specialising in Medieval History. His knighting in 1917 led to the naturalisation of his children. Igor, like Michael, was a keen Winkies player— they played against each other at an Old CoX game— as well as being a member of the Debating Society. Vinogradoff Jr., probably the most scholarly Russian in this article, followed closely in his father’ s footsteps, winning a scholarship to New College to read History and later working as a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. Igor was also a lead writer for the Guardian and worked for the BBC as a researcher, making contributions to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica and the English Historical Review amongst other important publications. He married twice; his first marriage ended in divorce, and he remarried in 1946 to Julian Morell, whom he had been in love with since his Oxford years, but her parents forbade the marriage. He died in 1987.
Alexander Wolkoff( Wolcough)( E, 1916-18) & Wladimir Wolkoff( Volkov)( Coll:, 1923-27)
Alexander and Wladimir were cousins; their family history is very interesting to say the least. Their grandfather, Alexander Nikolaevich Volkov-Muromtsev( 1844-1928), was a scientist turned art historian and artist. He first came to England in 1867 and married an Englishwoman— Alice Gore. Volkov-Muromtsev was quite poor, but in a turn of fortune, he successfully sold much of his art at a London gallery, later buying a palazzo in Venice. He also served as the vice-president of the Red Cross. His children( the fathers of Alexander and Wladimir) were brought up in England with their grandparents and went to English schools— though not Winchester, unfortunately— meaning that there were at least two Russian boys in England in the 1880s. Whilst Alexander’ s sister, Anna Wolkoff, has since become rather infamous— do look her up— very little is known about his cousin Wladimir, except that he left to Stockholm, where he was a manager of a market research firm. However, we do have his memoirs from the War( 1914-21) in Mob Lib. Alexander rowed and played cricket at the College, after which he was a manager of APC and a founder of the Shell Film Unit, working there for 30 years and overseeing its strategic direction. Alexander died in 1977, Wladimir in 2000.
Count Serge Davidoff-Orloff( Coll:, 1919-24)
The Davidoff-Orloffs were part of the extended Tolstoy family— yes, that one. Serge’ s father Alexei was a wealthy landowner of over a hundred thousand hectares, as well as being a Worshipful Master of the freemasonry Grand Orient de France. Serge was a rower when at the College; in the Second World War, he worked in the Middle East and Balkans, organising transportation for special missions behind enemy lines. He is the only Russian on this list to have died in war. Passed away in 1945, Hamburg.
Vinogradoff left, Julian middle.
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