Countess Sophie Vladimirovna Kleinmichel (Mrs Philip Goodman), died 5 April, 2025. She was 95.
She was descended from the Royal House of Mecklenberg-Strelitz and was a direct descendant of George II, King of Gt Britain & Ireland.
She was born 27 March, 1930, daughter of Count Vladimir Petrovich Kleinmichel, CVO (1901-1982), the courtier who King George V despatched to Denmark to negotiate the purchase of the Romanov jewels from the King's aunt, the Empress Marie of Russia. Count Vladmir's wife was Countess Marie Catherine Sophie von Carlow (1893-1979), daughter of Georg, Duke of Mecklenberg-Strelitz (1859-1909), and descended from King George II.
Her father had arrived in England as a penniless exile in the 1920s, became a merchant banker in the City of London, and also was appointed by the Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, the sister of the murdered Tsar Nicholas II, to be the Comptroller of her household. Her parents were veritable pillars of the parish of the London Russian Orthodox Church in Exile. Countess Marie was the Patron of the parish Sisterhood of Saint Xenia for the last 20 years of her life; and the Count was both Treasurer and Starosta of the parish for more than 40 years, and it was his prudent care of the meagre resources of the parish that paved the way for building the London Russian Orthodox Cathedral (ROCOR). Following the death of Count Kleinmichel, his daughter became Starosta. It was while Mrs Goodman was Starosta that the ROCOR London parish found the courage (and the resources) to buy a plot of land in west London, on which today stands the Cathedral of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God and the Holy Royal Martyrs, an everlasting testimony to the faithful devotion of the Kleinmichel family to the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.
Sophia married 17 May, 1957, Philip Henry Russell Goodman (born 17 June, 1931), son of Sir Victor Goodman, KCB, OBE, MC (1899-1967), a public servant and sometime Clerk of the Parliaments, and his wife Julian Ottoline Morrell (1906-1989), scion of that landed gentry family.
Her husband's grandmother was Lady Ottoline Violet Ann Cavendish-Bentinck (1873-1938), scion of the Dukes of Portland, and a kinswoman of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, whose mother was a Cavendish-Bentinck.
Philip Goodman died 29 March, 2025, aged 93.
She leaves issue, five daughters, Mary, Catherine, Elizabeth, Sophia and Xenia.
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