Married, with a 23-year-old daughter, Gabriella Lang divides her time between Sydney and Bowral in the NSW southern highlands.
After qualifying as a solicitor, Gabriella specialised in litigation. She then left private practice and worked for several years in film and television. For the past 15 years, Gabriella has worked in philanthropy in the Not For Profit sector. .
Histry has always been her passion. Especially Imperial Russian history - something her fiercely patriotic Hungarian father struggled to come to terms with. In spite of his reservations and with his blessing, in 1995, she embarked on a PhD in Russian history. Her Thesis title was The Abdication of the Last Tsar. A Reappraisal of the Evidence. No-one warned her how challenging it would be to do this while living in Australia – and for this, she is very grateful. Not realising it couldn’t be done, she did it. Awarded her doctorate in 2000, this brave (insane?) endeavour necessitated Gabriella living and working in Russia for long periods while conducting research in archives in Moscow and St Petersburg. She also had to learn to read, write and speak Russian.
She wrote historical articles for university publications and since 2006, for Highlife Magazine and various other publications.
Having travelled extensively throughout Russia and Europe, Gabriella has also written freelance articles for Weekend Australian Travel and Leisure, including Russia’s Golden Ring Towns, Hungary – beyond the Tourist Trail, and Secrets of St Petersburg.
In 2017, Gabriella co-authored The Lost Tutor – John Epps and the Romanovs, which she wrote with Janet Epps – a relative of John Epps.
In 2018, Gabriella was invited to share her passion for Imperial Russia and teach a course for U3A (University of the Third Age) in the NSW southern highlands, where she lives part-time. This has expanded into several courses and now includes a course on History of Hungary 1868 – 1956.
Food and Freedom is her first memoir, written to honour and celebrate not only her personal history through her parents’ story but also her Hungarian heritage, of which she is immensely proud.
She is now working on a second memoir - Tsars in my Eyes - about her many trips to Russia, including her adventures conducting research in historical archives in the mid-1990s. At the time. she was one of the first Australian historians to gain access to the previoulsy classified Romanov section in the Archives of the Russian Federation in Moscow.
