Calendar

Alexander Waugh - The House of Wittgenstein

September 2008 to January 2009

In this dramatic historical and psychological epic, Alexander Waugh traces the triumphs and vicissitudes of a family held together by a fanatical love of music yet torn apart by money, madness, conflicts of loyalty and the cataclysmic upheaval of two world wars. Audience of 50+

www.bloomsbury.com/alexanderwaugh

The Wittgenstein family was one of the richest, most talented and most eccentric in European history. Karl Wittgenstein, who ran away from home as a wayward and rebellious youth, returned to his native Vienna to make a fortune in the iron and steel industries. He bought factories and paintings and palaces, but the domineering and overbearing influence he exerted over his eight children resulted in a generation of siblings fraught by inner antagonisms and nervous tension. Three of his sons committed suicide; Paul, the fourth, became a world-famous concert pianist (using only his left hand), while Ludwig, the youngest, is now regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century.

Through the bleak despair of a Siberian prison camp to the terror of a Gestapo interrogation room, one courageous and unlikely hero emerges from the rubble of the house of Wittgenstein in the figure of Paul, an extraordinary testament to the indomitable spirit of human survival.

Requests to Colin Midson: Tel 020 7494 6054 Email. colin_midson@bloomsbury.com