When he was growing up, recalls Julian Borger, it felt as if his family “had painted layer after layer of tasteful off-white over the top of something garish, more visceral and unsettling”. His difficult and dissatisfied psychologist father Robert had never managed to overcome “the refugee’s curse” of being “from two places and none at the same time”. His grandmother Erna, when invited over, “would typically arrive late and… insist on making Viennese food from scratch, unpacking her plastic shopping bags on the already set kitchen table”.
The rest of the family knew that Erna and the 11-year-old Robert, Viennese Jews fleeing Nazi persecution, had arrived in England in October 1938. She had been granted a visa to work as a maid, while he was adopted by Nancy and Reg Bingley in Wales. But further details, never mind the emotional impact of such dislocation and separation, were shrouded in silence.
