Above, Richard Flatter with my infant father The internet brings unexpected connections. It led the other day to my drinking coffee with a writer whose […]
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Snake, lizard and toadskin: my family’s handmade shoes
Hand-made shoes were once the nec plus ultra, and my family made some of the very best. Artists, aristocrats and business tycoons wore Graumann shoes […]
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Smutty art in Vienna
When Uncle Otto was trying to become an established figure in the art world, the Viennese had sex on the brain. Vienna could be called […]
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Fake Sacher torte
“Uncle Otto’s Puppet Theatre” aims to bring to life those of my family in bygone times in Vienna. The taste of Viennese pastries is very […]
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Freud on Shakespeare
I named “Uncle Otto’s Puppet Theatre” after my painter great-uncle, but his brother Richard was equally artistic. He was a playwright and the foremost translator […]
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Chicken farming to the strains of string quartets in New Jersey
When in Vienna, my grandparents had been middle-class intellectuals; my grandfather a well-paid lawyer, my grandmother a socialist and music-lover. The Second World War put […]
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Back to the future: the Vienna attacks
It’s perhaps an over-reaction brought on by having recently completed my Jewish ancestors’ history, but I felt personally attacked by the shootings in Vienna on […]
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