Jean Lombard (née McMurtry) comes originally from Dublin where she met her future husband John, a journalist, in Guinness’s Brewery. After working in Moscow as a nanny, she migrated to Australia and married John, a cousin of Kathleen ffrench.

In 1988 they opened the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s first bureau in the former USSR. While John reported the collapse of Soviet Communism, Jean travelled widely, researching Kathleen’s life and letters.

An Irish Woman in Czarist Russia
by Jean Lombard
John and Jean Lombard, with Tania Shurova at Red Square 1988