Lydia "Nellé" Tritton (Russian: Лидия Тереза ("Нелль") Керенская (Триттон)[1]) was an Australian journalist, poet and "public elocutionist".[2]
Lydia "Nellé" Tritton was born in Brisbane, Australia on 19 September 1899 and died on 10 April 1946.[3]
As a young woman in her mid twenties, Tritton sailed to London and toured Europe, gaining a reputation for knowledge of international affairs, which brought her into contact with Russian expatriates living in Paris.[2] In 1928 she married a former officer of the White Russian Army, Nicholas Alexander Nadejine, 43, in Kensington registry office. Nadejine, a professional singer, was unsuccessful in joining the Covent Garden Opera Company and reportedly had affairs with various rich Englishwomen.[2] The couple divorced in 1936.
In 1939 Tritton married exiled Russian prime minister Alexander Kerensky in Martins Creek, Pennsylvania and lived in exile in Pennsylvania.[4][5] Following their wedding, the Kerenskys lived in Paris briefly before moving to New York. In February 1946, while visiting her parents in Brisbane, Australia, Nell suffered a stroke and died of chronic nephritis on 10 April.
The story of her life was turned into a play Motherland, in 2016 by playwright Katherine Lyall-Watson.[6]