Insiders/Outsiders
Fascinating discussion at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival looking at the cultural contribution to the UK of refugees from Nazi Germany. The talk was chaired by Monica Bohm-Duchen, who has curated a year’s events on the subject, who began by paying tribute to Judith Kerr, the children’s author, whose death had been announced early that day, and who had come to England just before the Second World War with her parents. She talked about the book which accompanies the years events for which 22 people had written chapters on different aspects of cultural life including sculpture, design, photography, art dealers, Picture Post and much more. Norman Rosenthal, the art historian and curator, then talked about how his parents fled Nazi Germany and the friends they made in England in similar circumstances. He talked about the questions he wished he’d asked them. I loved an image he talked about of how a few years ago the second hand bookshops of H...