Her Grace The Duchess of Abercorn (Sacha Abercorn) was born in Tucson, Arizona, in 1946. She was educated in England. In 1966 she married and came to live in Co. Tyrone, in N. Ireland. She has two sons and one daughter.
Sacha trained as a counsellor in Jungian depth-psychology and conducted psychological workshops in both N Ireland and the Republic through the 1980s and 90s. Following an international commemoration in 1986 of her great, great, great grandfather, Alexander Pushkin, the Russian poet, Sacha initiated, in the name of her ancestor, the Pushkin Prizes. This programme, anchored in the school system, was designed to help children across the whole of Ireland ‘find a voice’. It also brought children together from Russia and Ireland.
In 2003 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Ulster and in the same year, a book of her prose poems, Feather from the Firebird was published. In 2008 Sacha received the OBE in recognition of her work in education and the community – of ‘bridge-building’ and reconciliation through the arts and the environment.