Tchaikovsky
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Galina von Meck (1891–1985)

Galina von Meck

Writer and translator, grand-niece of Tchaikovsky (b. 13/25 October 1891 in Moscow; d. 9 April 1985 at Hounslow, near London), born Galina Nikolaevna von Meck (Галина Николаевна фон Мекк, Galina Nikolaevna fon Mekk, Galina Nikolayevna fon Mekk).

Galina was the third child of Nadezhda von Meck's son Nikolai (1863–1929) and Tchaikovsky's niece Anna (b. Davydova, 1864–1942). On a visit to England in 1912 she met her first husband, William Noel Burrowes Perrott (b. 1880), by whom she had a daughter Anna (1915–1995); however, he failed to settle into Russian life and the marriage was dissolved in 1925. Galina was later arrested for trying to assist a prisoner over the Russian frontier, and spent several years in Moscow's Lubianka prison and exile in Siberia, where she married for the second time to a fellow prisoner, Dmitrii Orlovskii, who later disappeared. She was released in 1935 and made her way to England via Germany.

In England she wrote her autobiography—As I Remember Them (1973)—concerning her early family life. She also translated much of the correspondence between Tchaikovsky and her grandmother into English.