Lydia Ellen Tritton

Lydia "Nellé" Tritton (Russian: Лидия Тереза ("Нелль") Керенская (Триттон)[1]) was an Australian journalist, poet and "public elocutionist".[2]

Lydia Ellen Tritton, after her marriage to Nikolai Nadejin, c.1929

Biography

Lydia "Nellé" Tritton was born in Brisbane, Australia on 19 September 1899 and died on 10 April 1946.[3]

As a young woman in her mid twenties, Tritton sailed to London and toured Europe, gaining a reputation for knowledge of international affairs, which brought her into contact with Russian expatriates living in Paris.[2] In 1928 she married a former officer of the White Russian Army, Nicholas Alexander Nadejine, 43, in Kensington registry office. Nadejine, a professional singer, was unsuccessful in joining the Covent Garden Opera Company and reportedly had affairs with various rich Englishwomen.[2] The couple divorced in 1936. In 1939, Tritton married another Russian, Alexander Kerensky, who had led the first phase of the Russian Revolution in 1917[4][5] and lived in exile in Pennsylvania, US. Following their wedding, the Kerenskys lived in Paris briefly before moving to New York. In February 1946, while visiting her parents in Brisbane, Australia, Nell suffered a stroke and died of chronic nephritis on 10 April.

The story of her life was turned into a play Motherland, in 2016 by playwright Katherine Lyall-Watson.[6]

References

1. "Lydia Ellen ("Nell") Kerensky". geni_family_tree. Retrieved 28 March 2017.
2. Armstrong, Judith. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
3. http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/tritton-lydia-ellen-nell-11879
4. The extraordinary life of Nell Tritton, an Australian heiress who saved her husband from assassins Late Night Live, ABC Radio National. Retrieved 22 July 2020.
5. Whitman, Alden (12 June 1970). "Alexander Kerensky Dies Here at 89". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 28 March 2017.
6. Elliot, Ellen-Maree (7 May 2016). "Motherland at Redland Performing Arts Centre: A gripping tale of Brisbane, Russia and the Nazis". Couriel-Mail. Retrieved 13 January 2018.

Further reading

• Kesteven, Sophie; Whitfeld, Anna (22 July 2020). "The extraordinary life of Nell Tritton, an Australian heiress who saved her husband from assassins". Late Night Live. ABC Radio National. Retrieved 22 July 2020.