IT WAS a lady-in-waiting to the Russian royal family, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna, who caused most trouble for the Bolshevik killers when they came calling on 18 July 1918.
And 75 years later, documents which have been locked inside the most secret archives of the British state are chilling in their account of the murders: "She kept running about and hid herself behind a pillow, on her body were 32 wounds. The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna fell down in a faint. When they began to examine her she began to scream wildly and they dispatched her with bayonets and butt ends of their rifles."
The assassination of Tsar Nicholas II and his family horrified the then British King, George V, and the fate of his close Russian relatives has been the subject of mystery and speculation ever since.
The newly declassified files, compiled at great personal risk by British diplomats and secret agents, were handed over yesterday by the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, to his Russian counterpart, Igor Ivanov, at a ceremony at the Foreign Office. They contained hundreds of documents from the British archives on the death of the last Tsar and his family at the hands of the Bolsheviks. The exchange of documents came as Mr Cook and Mr Ivanov signed a memorandum of co-operation between the archives of the two foreign ministries. In return Mr Ivanov handed over original documents captured by Soviet forces from the Germans at the end of the Second World War. They relate largely to the fate of British prisoners of war held by the Germans.
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