Thomas Michell

Known in his day as Thomas Michell, C.B., he served in British public and diplomatic posts and became especially associated with Russia and Norway. Sources from library and archival records connect him with work at the British Embassy in St Petersburg, later service as British Consul-General in Norway, and membership in the Royal Geographical Society.

He is remembered as the author of travel and historical works including Russian Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil, Handbook for Travellers in Russia, Poland, and Finland, and History of the Scottish Expedition to Norway in 1612. Those books suggest the range that made him interesting to readers: he could write both as a practical guide for travelers and as a storyteller of northern European history.

Michell also appears in records connected with Anglican life in Norway, where his name is linked to efforts that helped establish organized Anglican worship in Christiania, now Oslo. Reliable sources found here do not fully agree on his birth year, so it is safest to say that he lived in the nineteenth century and died in 1899.