Nadia Georges-Picot in Shanghai

Here’s one for the French to see what they can find – Nadia Georges-Picot. Nadia, a White Russian in France later, was born around 1903 as Nadia (or Nadya) Biske. She married Guillaume  Georges-Picot (sometimes just George-Picot and sometimes with the hyphen) in 1932. Guillaume, from a public service oriented family in France, was a diplomat was served between 1937 and 1940 as First Secretary at the French Embassy in China (which, at the time of his appointment, was mostly located at Shanghai due to the Japanese invasion). In 1940 Guillaume and Nadia had a baby in Shanghai, called Olga (below), who went on to become a well-known actress in France before committing suicide in 1997. Guillaume joined the Free French in 1942, serving as a liaison with the USA, and died in 1981 after a long and distinguished di0lomatic career post war at the UN. I’m afraid I do not know when Nadia died.

My interest in her was peaked because no lesser a personage than Elsa Schiaparelli (in her autobiography Shocking Life) refers to Nadia as very stylish and recalls visiting her, after the war, in Washington DC she writes that their home, ‘might have been in Peking or Saigon, so filled was it with all the captivating things she had brought back from China.’