BOOKS
Good Living Street
The Fortunes of My Viennese Family
Tim BonyhadyRRP: £10.99
5 September 2019
Published by Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781743319581
RRP: £16.99
1 July 2012
Published by Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781743310045
In 1900 Vienna was one of the most exciting places to live in the world. Its glamorous high society was the envy of Europe, and it was the centre of an exploding arts movement that set the tone for the following century.
Tim Bonyhady’s family were leading patrons of the arts in fin de siècle Vienna: Gustav Klimt painted his great-grandmother’s portrait, Josef Hoffmann designed their lavish residence and Gustav and Alma Mahler were close acquaintances.
In Good Living Street Bonyhady follows the lives of three generations of women in his family in an intimate account of fraught relationships, romance, and business highs and lows. They enjoyed a lifestyle of unimaginable luxury and privilege until the rise of Nazism made their existence in Austria untenable.
In 1938, as Kristallnacht was raging, his family fled Vienna for a small flat in Australia, taking with them the best private collection of art and design to escape the Nazis. As they remade their lives as refugees, the past was rarely discussed and fifty years passed before Tim discovered the remarkable arc of his family’s fortunes.
SIGN UP TO OUR NEWSLETTER