Michael Imeretinsky


Prince Michael Imeretinsky AFC was a British military officer of Georgian royal descent. He belonged to the Bagrationi dynasty and directly descended from the Kings of Imereti.
Michael Imeretinsky was born to a Georgian father, "Serene Prince" George Imeretinsky, and a Russian mother, Lidya Nikolayevna Klimova, in St. Petersburg. He descended from the royal dynasty of the western Georgian kingdom of Imereti, which had been conquered by the Russian Empire in 1810. Like his elder brother, George, Michael Imeretinsky received his early education at the Lancing College in the United Kingdom and enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps as a sub-lieutenant in 1918. He fought in both World War I and World War II, serving as a squadron commander of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve on the latter occasion. He was decorated with the Air Force Cross. After his retirement from the military, Imeretinsky lived in the United Kingdom and France. He devoted himself to agriculture, being—as his obituary put it—"a prominent member of the Soil Association and a well-known horticulturist in France." In 1975, he died, aged 75, in Nice, being the last direct male descendant of the kings of Imereti.
Prince Imeretinsky married Margaret Stella Wright in 1925. They had three daughters: