A biography of five intrepid women who, by travelling abroad and working as governesses in Russia, achieved an intellectual dignity, a purpose and an authority which was denied them in their homeland.

A Russian Upstairs, Downstairs, but one scented with the cordite and fear of revolution. Miss Emmie is an intimate and revealing portrait of pre-Revolutionary Russian society which, contrary to received wisdoms, reveals a complex, liberal, and humane society, full of enormous potential and past achievement. It is also the biography of five intrepid women who, by traveling abroad and working as governesses in Russia, achieved an intellectual dignity, a purpose, and an authority that was denied them in their homeland. The extraordinary personal adventures of these women, as they negotiate the turmoil and terrifying anarchy of Revolution and Civil War, turns the book into a page-turning thriller.