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Sofka Zinovieff (born 1961) is a British author and journalist.
Early life
Zinovieff was born in London. Her parents were Peter Zinovieff and Victoria Gala Heber-Percy. Her paternal grandparents were White Russians who had left Soviet Russia for the United Kingdom shortly after the October Revolution. Zinovieff would later write a biography of her grandmother, Sofka Skipwith. Her maternal grandfather was the noted eccentric aristocrat Robert Heber-Percy, whose property, including the Faringdon House estate in Oxfordshire, she inherited at the age of 25; through him she is a descendant of Algernon Percy, 1st Earl of Beverley, of the family of the Dukes of Northumberland.
She grew up in Putney in south-west London, where her father was founder of Britain's first synthesizer manufacturer, Electronic Music Studios (London) Ltd. She studied social anthropology at Cambridge University. Later she gained a PhD after living and carrying out research in the Peloponnese.
Career
Zinovieff has worked as a journalist and book reviewer for various British publications. She has written several books, from memoirs and biographies to novels.
Works
- Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens (Granta, 2004). ISBN 1-86207-750-9 ISBN 978-1-86207-750-8
- Red Princess: A Revolutionary Life (Granta, 2007). ISBN 1-86207-919-6 ISBN 978-1-86207-919-9
- The House on Paradise Street (Short Books, 2012). ISBN 978-1-907595-69-1
- The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me (Jonathan Cape, 2014). ISBN 978-0-22409-659-1
- Putney (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018) ISBN 9781408895757
Personal life
Sofka Zinovieff has lived and worked in Russia, Italy, and, for many years, in Greece. She and her Greek husband Vassilis Papadimitriou live between Athens and London. They have two daughters.
References
- Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 2, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, pp. 2943-2944
- ^ Olinda Adeane (10 May 2021). "Faringdon House: The Palladian gem immortalised in Nancy Mitford's the Pursuit of Love". House & Garden. Retrieved 13 May 2023.