From the prologue :

"In the early hours of the morning 18th July 1918 two carts left the small Siberian town of Alapaevsk and followed the Sinyachikhenskaya road to a disused mine. There, soldiers alighting from the carts, ordered eight blindfolded prisoners - six men and two women - to walk forwards and, striking their heads with rifle butts, forced them one after another into the waterlogged shaft. Having hurled hand grenades after them into the pit, the soldiers assumed their task was complete and were about to leave when to their amazement the sound of singing echoed from beneath the ground. From a ledge nineteen metres below a woman was singing the Russian Orthodox hymn: ‘Lord Save Your People.’

Some weeks later as the First World War drew to its bloody conclusion across Europe, battles still raged for control of revolutionary Russia. With the arrival of the White Army in Alapaevsk, the bodies were recovered from the mine: five grand dukes, a companion, and two middle-aged nuns. By the side of the incorrupt body of one of the nuns lay an unexploded grenade, on her breast an icon of Christ. How did a fairy-tale princess, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II and King George V, and sister-in-law of two Russian Tsars come to so terrible an end? ‘Ravishingly beautiful’, ‘saintly’, ‘enigmatic’, revered as a saint by the poor of Moscow, what drove the Lutheran daughter of Princess Alice to turn her into the Russian Imperial Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, then ‘Matushka’ mother of the poor, and finally Holy Imperial Martyr Saint Elizabeth? Why did the gentle Elizabeth of Hesse-Darmstadt, described by one her admirers as ‘the most beautiful creature of God I have ever seen’, die of infected wounds and starvation in a mineshaft in Siberia?"

These were some of the questions which inspired the biography of this remarkable woman whose statue now stands above the West Door of Westminster Abbey, as one of the martyrs of the 20th Century. Adored and yet vilified as a German spy; childless, yet loved by children; gentle, yet capable of virtually single-handedly engineering the marriage of her ill-fated sister, Alexandra to Nicholas II, last Tsar of all the Russias; devoted to her difficult husband, yet so often the object of slander and gossip, at first glance her intriguing life seems one of extremes. Yet there is one unchanging thread running through this story - from all the glamour of Royal Courts in the halcyon days of the 19th century monarchies, to the abject poverty of Moscow's slums; she maintained an unchanging determination to bring beauty into the world. Far from being simply a story of an another era, the life of Ella, Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna speaks directly of so many issues facing the world today. In a life which encountered terrorism, the need for religious tolerance, the bridging of the gap between the rich and the poor, and the joining of the material with the spiritual, Ella's is not only a fascinating historical life but perhaps, more importantly, a template for the future of all our lives.

The Counting House

When seven-year-old Georgie, desperate to win the attention of her hero, James, steals a candlestick from a cemetery lodge, she believes that the devil has seen her and will follow her home. Her conviction is heightened that evening when tragedy strikes the family. Guilt-ridden, Georgie sets out on a quest to become a saint, in the hope that God will grant her a miracle. Her sincere but often bizarre efforts lead her through various escapades from a remote Yorkshire farmhouse to being lost in London, when she is accosted by a sinister stranger. The arrival of a distant relative throws her world into greater confusion as she comes to understand the nature of good, evil and accident. The story is populated by a variety of eccentric characters; feisty ex-suffragette, GreatAunt Lucy; the pious but increasingly senile Great Aunt Philomena; beautiful French Aunt Marie and her huge explorer husband; the cruel teacher, Miss Keppel; and the contrasting personalities of Georgie and her friends and siblings.

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Christina Croft was born in Warwickshire in 1961, the youngest of three children, and was brought up to appreciate literature from an early age. Her childhood memories of holidays are of visiting historic buildings and the homes of famous authors, playwrights and poets.

Following an academic education at Notre Dame Grammar School in Leeds, she studied English and Divinity in Liverpool, gaining a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Post Graduate Certificate of Education. In term time she carried out voluntary work in a soup kitchen for the homeless, and during the summer vacations she worked voluntarily as a guide in Lourdes, living in the Pyrenean Camp des Jeunes, and leading group tours for people from all over the world.

After gaining teaching experience, she acted as a private tutor to a family in France before returning to England, where she worked as a nursing auxiliary. She has taught English, History, R.E. and French in schools and colleges, to children from the ages of four to eighteen. After obtaining a Diploma in Health Education and qualifying as a Registered Nurse, she worked in hospitals and the community. Her many faceted experiences, and knowledge of both French and Italian, have been invaluable in her understanding of human nature, and to her writing.

Christina has written from as far back as she can remember, her earliest success coming at the age of twelve when a poem was accepted for publication. Since then she has published two books of poetry as well as writing for the poetry magazines Aereopagus, Helicon and Cherrybite. Working as a poet-in-the-community, she worked with children of different backgrounds, assisting them to express themselves through literature, and participated in the creation of an anthology of their work.

She has co-written two musicals - Branwell, based on the life of Branwell Bronte; and Tsaritsa based on the life of Alexandra, the last Tsarina of Russia - and written the lyrics for songs which have been recorded and performed on local radio and by choirs at concerts in churches, village halls and schools. She has also written and performed in comic reviews.

In 2003, Christina's biography of Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna of Russia, was short listed for the Biographers’ Club Award.

Her new novel, The Counting House, - described by various English editors as ‘a wonderful evocation of childhood’ ; ‘eminently suitable for publication,’ and ‘wonderfully adaptable for film or television’ - brings together varied experiences as seen through a child’s eye view of the world.

Christina's innate ability to take us into the kingdom of childhood, as well as into the kingdoms of those who have ruled, is uncanny. Her books are lived in, rather than read and put aside, feasts for the soul, engaging the heart and imagination. If the work of Charles Dickens was merged with that of Barbara Pym, it might approach the sheer quality, and immediacy found in Christina's work.

She currently lives in Yorkshire, where she is working on a fifth novel and pursuing historical research with a view to writing further non-fiction works based around the lives of the European royal families in the 19th century.