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Showing posts from September, 2009

Authors as mediums and buffs

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . Take the case of Tarantino . Tarantino started out as a film buff immersed in film. He obsessed, and the films he directs are not simply "homages", they don't merely make references to the films he likes, his films are authored by the films that formed him. It is not particularly original to say this, but it is interesting to reflect on the idea. In fact the central plot line of "Kill Bill" is almost completely plagiarised from an earlier film, right down to the scene where the heroine escapes from a wooden casket. Of course Tarantino has his heroine escape using Kung Fu. Take another example, that of Bob Dylan. He was a Tarantino of sorts. Robert Zimmerman was a music buff, an obsessive and a fan of Woody Guthrie. In fact he was also a rather sinister mythomane . He went to Woody Guthrie, immobilised and dying, in order to help himself get anointed as a folk singer. Imagine Mark Chapman singing John Lennon his songs as

A meeting with a kind professor

I've just had a long meeting with a professor of German at the University and in a short space of time he explained many things to me in addition to translating several letters from the period of the war and the period just prior to the war. I didn't know that both families were in touch with each other. I didn't know that Heini was such an important go between in the whole affair. I didn't know that the Prague ghetto was even worse in some cases than the Warsaw ghetto and that Regine was living with all her important possessions taken away from her in a ghetto with very little food and certainly no protein. Regine confided to Heini, forbidding him to tell Else or Lisa that she was in such a desperate situation. She was considering suicide because it was so bad. Pathetically, she offers to help Heini. "Some things are available here which you might need." she says, and sends Heini and Caroline her bedding and a few other things. Carolin is 67. She berates God

Mike Hall: the closest thing to a Guru

Eve and Richard Steinhardt 1976

Institution de la Porte du Parc, Eve Steinhardt and friend

 3 avenue de Joinville, 94130 Nogent-sur-Marne

Halls in India with Grandpa and Granny

Dad in 2007

Children bearing up well while mothers are in jail

Eve and Tony Hall at Matumi in 2006

The British Trade Unions and the Left should form a new political party we can vote for.

Cuts are New Labour's death warrent... ...so why don't the British Trade Unions help to start a new political party? When Brown announced that his government intended to introduce cuts today he was aligning himself with the Tories and effectively signing New Labour's death warrent. Using the gloss of identity politics and invoking Labour's old traditions will not fool the electorate for much longer. New Labour and the Conservatives work for the same people. Polly Toynbee is wrong. There is no any time left to make a clear distinction between the Tories and Labour. They are both clearly following the same agenda. After Gordon Brown's speech to the unions, to highlight the differences between the parties mere pedantry. There is no way anyone who is even vaguely socialist can vote for Labour now unless Labour has a leadership election and gets rid of Brown and sidelines all the New Labourites. If Labour is willing to go down the road of cuts to public services this bas

Coming to a halt in Nainital

Photo by Susmita Chatterji We arrived in New Delhi in January when the weather was still mild, and the three of us had to adapt to a new school: The British School. Mom and dad quickly became friends with the ANC representatives in New Delhi: Aggie, Mosie and Zubie. We got to know the Msimang kids and my brothers became firm friends with Fabian. When you teased Fabian he didn't laugh, he just smiled, stood up straight, feet planted slightly apart, and looked right back at you with a fist under each bicep. The twins were 13 and more adventurous than I. With our parents' approval, they travelled with Fabian all over town. Fabian knew the ropes and they tried all the different kinds of street food together without falling ill. But the twins were a bit girlish; their voices hadn't broken and their long hair was turning from light brown to straw blond in the sun, so Fabian found himself protecting them from the seedy, bottom pinching men that there always are on

Scooters, Boullabaisse, goosebumps and a party

Mom is just 22 and just married and just two months pregnant, (but she doesn't know it). This is the first time she has really been apart from her mother and father and she sounds so enthusiastic about being on her own with dad, but neither of them really know how to work it. She writes long letter after long letter to Lisa and Richard while she and dad are in Cape Town. This is one letter of many. Dad is 23 and taking a course in journalism. Mom mentions Marius Skoon . Mom's old letters are so newsy and fresh and upbeat a wonderful tonic for anyone who reads them. 19, Trianon, Ave. Marseilles, Sea Point, Cape Town. 22/4/59 Darling Mom and Dad, I've just got your letter telling me about Frame , and it's very exciting. I hope something came out of it. And I can tell you one thing, that if you live in Paarl , as soon as possible, To and I are going to live in Cape Town too. We were just saying yesterday, that it would be marvellous if we could make our per

Great granny Regine, Eve (Mom) and Granny Lisa: Paris 1936

Tony Hall, Dad and me (1959)

Chris and Andy Hall 1968

Have they changed? Not really!

Else and Richard Steinhardt

Inscription on the back in English: To the dearest and prettiest girl Fondly Richard

Namaqualand flowers

Picture taken by Mary Turok.

Else Steinhardt, opera singer: born on 7th February 1908, died 3rd September 1942

Grandpa Steinhardt climbing mountains with freinds

Grandpa is the swarthy young man in the foreground on the left. When Granny Lisa was particularly annoyed by the memory of Richard's old fashioned domineering behaviour towards her she would say, rather spitefully: "Richard's family were only peasants really." And then later on, once she was more secure in that particular fiction, she would say: "They were really only Gypsies. Of course they were they must have been. They came from a little village in Slovakia called Zemoun." . . . . . . . . . Richard Steinhardt is centre front

Eve Hall (Mom) at the Holy Communion of a Friend in Paris in 1941

When Mom went to school she saw her friends take Holy Communion and she longed to do so herself. But Granny was Lutheran and Grandpa was Jewish and so she couldn't. But, at six, she learned about Joan of Arc and hated the English for killing her and dreamed of becoming a nun; or so she told me.

Isidore Steinhardt in Archduke Ferdinand's reception committee in Sarajevo

Isidore Steinhardt , the foreign editor of the Neue Freie Presse , is the man in the picture with his head circled in black.

Spare a thought for Heini Göbel, 99 and on his death bed

Heini on stage in Hamburg

Eve Steinhardt (19) at home in Bramley, Jo'burg

Picture by Tony Hall

Richard Steinhardt / Grandpa and friends in Vienna in the 1920s

Grandpa is second from the right. He is standing.

Granny and Grandpa and "Babylein" (Mom) with friends in Paris

Grandpa second from the left at the top and Granny second from the left at the bottom.

Granny Lisa Göbel's school in Frankfurt, 1925

Granny Lisa is seated on a chair, she's the first on the right

Grandpa Richard in South Africa during the war

Grandpa Richard (on the right) acting the goat in South Africa during the war

Eve and Lisa in Austria after the war

Lisa and Eve (Granny and Mom) before the war

Lisa and Eve (Granny and Mom) during the war

Heini and Lisa dressed up as old people on their 97th birthday in 2006

Eve Hall (Mom) aged 9 in 1945

Grandpa Richard Steinhardt at the beach with friends (second from the right)

Richard, Paula, Else and Regine (left to right)

Else Steinhardt

Granny Lisa Göbel, (top row on the left)

Regine Steinhardt (Neumann) in Vienna

Great aunt Else Steinhardt as a child

Grandpa Richard and Uncle Arthur Steinhardt

Grandpa Richard, great granny Regine and great aunt Else

Pam and Eve at the Marriot in Cairo: August 1991

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . hi phil, did i ever send you this, i am not sure. came across it recently and if i have, it doesn't hurt to send it gain. it was taken at the marriot hotel in cairo, august 1991. we had a great meal and then went market shopping. Love to you all, Pam

The painful prose of Rostopchine

. You used to read Mme la Comtesse de Segur... . . ...when you were 5 years old and in Paris alone with your mother. . I saw a book in a shop in Golfe Juan by the Comtesse the last time I was there with granny, and thought of buying it for you. Granny and I had a lovely time sipping Pastis and chatting together that holiday - she was only 97, independent, enjoying Pastis with me and laughing. When I told you about the book, you looked at me sharply and said: - "That would have been very painful." And I knew you would say that. I was provoking you. I thought: - "Now you really do need to talk to me about Paris during the war, because time is running out." At least that's what I thought then. And so I phoned Linda Grant as you got worse to ask her if she would help you get your memoirs published and Linda immediately phoned Gillian Slovo , (daughter of your old heroic friends, Ruth and Joe Slovo ) and Linda phoned me ba