A moody Freud posed against a background of holiday pictures pinned to a wall; or lurking at the very edge of a large family group; or lost in a crowd of nineteenth-century scientists. These snapshots or posed portraits not only tell stories, they also carry a specific emotional charge. The earlier essays in this book follow traces of Freud's early years through the evidence of such album photographs; the later essays use them to reconstruct the stories of various family members. An unknown photo of his half-brother Emanuel initiates an investigation into the Manchester Freuds. An identity photo of his daughter Anna, and the document to which it is attached, throw light on the critical final days of her trip to England in 1914. A faded idyllic print of children playing evolves into a discussion of Ernst Freud's luck and childhood. The suicide of Anna's artist cousin, Tom Seidmann Freud, emerges from a snap of her infant daughter Angela.

A moody Freud posed against a background of holiday pictures pinned to a wall; or lurking at the very edge of a large family group; or lost in a crowd of nineteenth-century scientists. These snapshots or posed portraits not only tell stories, they also carry a specific emotional charge. The earlier essays in this book follow traces of Freud s early years through the evidence of such album photographs; the later essays use them to reconstruct the stories of various family members. An unknown photo of his half-brother Emanuel initiates an investigation into the Manchester Freuds. An identity photo of his daughter Anna, and the document to which it is attached, throw light on the critical final days of her trip to England in 1914. A faded idyllic print of children playing evolves into a discussion of Ernst Freud s luck and childhood. The suicide of Anna s artist cousin, Tom Seidmann Freud, emerges from a snap of her infant daughter Angela. The story of Oliver Freud s life and his relationship to his father are extrapolated from a passport photo that bears witness to his narrow escape from Vichy France in 1942. A haunting image of his infant daughter Eva brings her tragically short life into focus. Drawing on many years of work in the photo archives at the London Freud Museum, this fascinating and unfamiliar slant on neglected episodes and little-known members of the Freud family restores the density of lived experience to the historical picture."

Elena Shvarts was the most outstanding Russian poet of her generation. 'Paradise' presents a dual language selection of her earlier poetry, and was a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. Each new generation has to reinterpret St Petersburg, the place, the culture and its significance for Russia. Shvarts's haunted and demonic city is nearer Dostoyevsky's than Akhmatova's or Brodsky's. Her poetry draws backwoods Russian folklore with its cruelty, its religiosity and its quaint humour, into stone, cosmopolitan Petropolis. She brings out both the truth and the irony of Peter the Great's 'Paradise', celebrating and reviling her native city as a crossroads of dimensions, a reality riddled with mythical monuments and religious symbols. Despite the blood beneath its pavements, her St Petersburg also reveals traces of an angelic origin: 'Black rats nest over the shining river, in undergrowth, / They're permitted, welcome, nothing can ruin paradise on earth.' Elena Shvarts stood outside all schools and movements in contemporary Russian poetry. She once famously described poetry as a 'dance without legs'. Her own poetry fits this description perfectly, a combination of deeply rhythmic and lyrical dance with the eccentric, perpetual movement of flight. The world of her poems is strange and grotesque; often the setting is urban, but unrecognisable - towns emptied of the everyday and peopled only by animals, spirits and strange elemental forces. A peculiar religious fervour illuminates these scenes, but her religion is unorthodox and highly individual. Shvarts's poetry is visionary. Her vision takes her to the edge of language and rhythm, and she was one of the few contemporary poets brave enough to trust her vision absolutely.