Isabel De Madariaga

Isabel Margaret de Madariaga (27 August 1919 – 16 June 2014) was a British historian who specialised on Russia in the 18th century and Catherine the Great. She published six books on Russia and is credited for changing the perception of Catherine the Great amongst Russian and Western scholars. Born to a Spanish diplomat and a Scottish economic historian, she was taught at 16 schools during her childhood and earned a first-class honours degree in Russian language and literature at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). De Madariaga worked for BBC Monitoring in the Second World War, and was a civil servant at the Ministry of Information and HM Treasury. She held a series of part-time posts at the London School of Economics, was secretary on the editorial board of ''The Slavonic and East European Review,'' co-founded the ''Government and Opposition'' journal's editorial board and was a lecturer at the University of Sussex, Lancaster University and the SSEES.

Early life and career

De Madariaga was born at 7 Park Circus Place in Hillhead, Glasgow on 27 August 1919. She was the younger daughter of the Spanish diplomat and writer Salvador de Madariaga and the Scottish economic historian Constance Helen Margaret (née Archibald). Her elder sister was the writer Nieves Mathews. As a consequence of her father's career, De Madariaga lived in Geneva during her early years because he was working for the League of Nations before he moved to Paris to be the United States ambassador for the Spanish republic. She was taught at sixteen different schools, including Miss Woods's school in Headington, the International School of Geneva and Instituto-Escuela in Madrid.

She learnt to play the piano in the ballroom of the Spanish Embassy and met a wide variety of cultured individuals such as Maurice Ravel. This made De Madariaga passionate about music and she was fluent in English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. Her family was forced to move to the United Kingdom after the Spanish Civil War began in 1936. At the age of 18, De Madariaga went to London and was the first woman undergraduate student to enroll on a Russian language and literature degree at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSESS). She earned first-class honours in 1940 and the John Marshall Prize. The outbreak of the Second World War disrupted her studying and Da Madariaga was evacuated to Oxford.

Because she was a polyglot, the BBC
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