Good Living Street: The Fortunes Of My Viennese Family

From high society in Vienna to a small flat in Sydney; from patrons of the arts to refugees from the Holocaust; this is the enthralling story of three generations of women spanning a century of upheaval.

In 1900 Vienna was one of the most exciting places to live in the world. Its glamorous high society was the envy of Europe, and it was the centre of an exploding arts movement that set the tone for the following century.

Tim Bonyhady's great-grandparents were leading patrons of the arts in fin de siecle Vienna: Gustav Klimt painted his great-grandmother's portrait, and the family knew many of Vienna's leading cultural figures. In Good Living Street he follows the lives of three generations of women in his family in an intimate account of fraught relationships, romance, and business highs and lows. They enjoyed a lifestyle of luxury and privilege-until everything changed for families of Jewish origin like his.

In 1938, his family fled Vienna for a small flat in a harbourside suburb of Sydney, taking with them the best private collection of art and design to escape the Nazis.

'Wonderful. A haunting saga of high art, hate and survival.' - David Marr

'An enthralling family history beginning in an opulent apartment in Habsburg Vienna and ending in a flat in Cremorne, interwoven with the social, political and art history of the period.' - Patrick McCaughey

Tim Bonyhady is a cultural historian and environmental lawyer at the Australian National University. His many books include the prize-winning The Colonial Earth.