An Irish Woman in Czarist Russia

By Jean Lombard

Not surprisingly, the book earns the praise of Thomas Keneally whose book Schindler’s Ark – later made into the Steven Spielberg film Schindler’s List – came about as a result of a chance meeting in a shop in Los Angeles.

Like Keneally, author Jean Lombard discovered the story of Kathleen ffrench more by accident than design. Jean Lombard (née McMurtry) originally came from Dublin where she met her future husband John, a journalist. After working in Moscow as a nanny, Jean migrated to Australia and married John. In 1988, they opened the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s first bureau in the former Soviet Union.