The author, journalist and grande dame of Austrian literature, Hilde Spiel (1911–1990), was born in Vienna. She emigrated to London in 1936, returning to Austria for the first time in 1946 as correspondent for the New Statesman and later in 1963 to resettle there for good. Hilde Spiel left an impressive body of works in both German and English, including novels such as Flute and Drums and The Darkened Room, and her biography of Fanny von Arnstein. For twenty years she was correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Weltwoche. Her memoirs are a microcosm of literary and political life in Europe during the upheavals of the twentieth century and convey the conflicting forces in the lives of émigré Europeans during and after the years of WWII. They have been translated into English by Hilde Spiel’s daughter Christine Shuttleworth.

Christine Shuttleworth, Hilde Spiel’s daughter, lives as a translator in London. Hilde Spiel’s son Felix de Mendelssohn works as a psychoanalyst in Vienna and is Head of Department of Psychoanalytic Studies at the Sigmund-Freud-University.