I was inspired to write this song by a postcard I came across in a second hand bookshop during a trip to Budapest some years ago. The postcard is of the view from the Gellért Hill of the Danube taken before the war, dated December 1936.
It was written in English and addressed, to a man in Bournemouth, but never sent. The woman who wrote the postcard was anxious to know why her gentleman friend wasn’t replying to her letters. What caught my eye was a solitary word in Hungarian in the bottom left corner, 'Szeretsz?' which means 'Do you love me?' She must have thought better of sending it. This tugged at my heartstrings and I had to buy the postcard.
It's signed Julia Spitzer. Her surname indicates that she was Jewish and her address was in a smart residential area near the Danube. By 1936 the outlook for the Jewish population was getting worse. Hungary’s government was well in the thrall of Nazi Germany and the erosion of Jewish community’s civil liberties was well under way.
Julia’s former apartment was just yards away from one of the Hungarian militia's, the Arrow Cross, riverside execution sites. Their victims were made to strip on the embankment and were shot into the Danube. Sometimes they were bound together to save ammunition. About 10,000 Jews were murdered in this way between mid October 1944 and January 1945. The bronze shoes on the embankment are a memorial to them.
I have been searching for traces of Julia on the internet but without much success. I was at the city archives in Budapest last year and found out that she was living with her parents. The family was on the electoral roll for 1943 after which the I found no further records of them, or Julia, but I'm still searching.
December frost on the cobblestones
Bridges cast in monochrome
Naked trees on the boulevards
Your words take me back in time
Ice drifting through the city’s heart
Floating islands of my thoughts
About the heartbreak you revealed
On a fragment of your past
Was there ice that December
When the eagle rode the flames
Could you see the storm coming
Did you face it on your own
Julia, I’ve been looking for you
I want to know
You found a love that was true
Julia, I’ll keep looking for you
I won’t forget
The red shades of blue
I wonder if you found out why
His replies never came
He could count on his liberty
While yours was stolen day by day
Echoes from the courtyard
Shadows in the stairwell
Did you find salvation
From hell’s carousel
Julia, I’ve been looking for you
I want to know
You found a love that was true
Julia, I’ll keep looking for you
I won’t forget
The red shades of blue
Julia, I’ve been looking for you
I want to know
You found a love that was true
Julia, I’ll keep looking for you
I won’t forget
The red shades of blue
Red shades of blue
Star in My Shadow - Jane Haining
"Star in My Shadow" was inspired by Jane Haining, who was born in Dunscore, near Dumfries, Scotland, in 1897. She won a scholarship to Dumfries Academy in 1909. She worked in Paisley as a secretary for J & P Coats threadmakers for ten years, and lived in Forth Street, Pollokshields, Glasgow. Her local church was the Queens Park West United Free Church.
She then worked as a matron at the Scottish Mission School for girls in Budapest from 1932 to April 1944. She was arrested by the Gestapo after the school housekeeper’s Nazi son-in-law reported her to them; Jane had admonished him for stealing from the pupils’ food rations. She died in Auschwitz in July 1944.
I searched for accounts from other Hungarians who remember that first bombardment of Budapest. One of them, also a young girl at the time, described how she saw "these little silver crosses trailing long white ribbons in the sky, higher than the sun". She thought they were beautiful at first, but then their roar got louder and louder. The alarm in Budapest was sounded at 10.35am on Monday 3rd April 1944, so it probably cut the girls' playtime short. The routine was that the Americans would bomb during the day, and the RAF at night. I wrote the song from the perspective of one the girls in Jane's care at that time.
The chorus quotes Jane. When directed by the Church of Scotland not to return to Budapest from her holiday in the UK in September 1939, she replied, 'If these children needed me in days of sunshine, how much more will they need me in days of darkness?'
The star in the song’s title symbolises Jane’s spirit, which has shone through "days of sunshine... and darkness" for those who remember her.
A film about Jane by the BBC, presented by Sally Magnusson, includes contributions from surviving pupils and was broadcast in 2014.
There is also a very informative five-minute segment about Jane from a special edition of the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow
There was a major exhibition about Jane's life at the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest in 2017, opened by the UK ambassador to Hungary, Iain Lindsay, who is highly regarded there as he learned to speak Hungarian very well.
Jane Haining was commemorated in Budapest on April 14th, 2019 during that year's March of the Living, which was led by Ambassador Iain Lindsay.
The school is now a state run primary school but the church, St Columba’s, is still maintained by the Church of Scotland.
Karine Polwart wrote a beautiful song about Jane Haining, Balearie Baloo, recorded for her 2009 album Scribbled In Chalk:
Strings arranged for Innotet by Innes Watson
Innotet are:
Seonaid Aitken: First Violin
Innes Watson: Second Violin
Patsy Reid: Viola
Alice Allen: Cello
Backing Vocals: Seonaid Aitken
Recorded, mixed and mastered at GloWorm and Carrier Waves, Glasgow, by Andrea Gobbi
Photo Acknowledgements:
B24 Liberator bombers over Budapest: Fortepan.hu - Hungarian National Archive
Air raid on Budapest: Fortepan.hu - Ákos Schermann
Propaganda posters, ‘We don’t recognise mercy’, ‘Am I also a military target?’: Fortepan.hu - Tivadar Lissák
Photographs of Jane Haining with pupils: Budapest Holocaust Memorial Centre.
I remember silver birds
Higher than the sun
Long white fingers followed them
Spring had just begun
They looked so beautiful
In the April blue
Steel in place of feathers
They thundered as they flew
You helped me down the spiral stairs
Banshees howled and wailed
The musty cellar and the rats
With their scary teeth and tails
Your hand on my shoulder
The smile in your voice
You faced the terror with us
Even though you had a choice
You’re the star in my shadow
In days of sunshine
In days of darkness
You’re the star in my shadow
Shines the light
Of your love on me
We saw them take you in their car
I couldn’t say goodbye
We would follow in your tracks
Sometime in July
All these years later
There’s a street with your name
Where we walked together
We walk together now
You’re the star in my shadow
In days of sunshine
In days of darkness
You’re the star in my shadow
Shines the light
Of your love on me
We lost you in that valley
But I heard your echo there
You loved that song of David’s
My refuge in the nightmare
You’re the star in my shadow
In days of sunshine
In days of darkness
You’re the star in my shadow
Shines the light
Of your love on me
The Nightingale - Vali Rácz
Vali Rácz was a classically trained singer from Hungary. She graduated from the Liszt Academy, Budapest, in 1932. She became a very popular chanteuse and movie star in the 1930s and 40s, and was regarded by many as Hungary’s own Marlene Dietrich. She was honoured by Yad Vashem, recognising her as Righteous Among the Nations in 1991.
Rácz sheltered several Jewish friends and an army deserter in her villa in Buda for seven months during the Nazi occupation. All survived the war. She was arrested by the Gestapo in November 1944 and was held by them at their headquarters, the requisitioned Majestic Hotel in the Buda hills. Thanks to her cool courage and the intervention of her film director colleague, who was also in the resistance, she was released two weeks later. Late on the night before her release, Rácz sang to her fellow captives in the Majestic in the hope that her singing would offer them some comfort and distraction from their predicament. She sang ‘My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean’ in English, which was daring as well as subversive given the setting.
The Nazis had installed a puppet government, the fascist Arrow Cross party. The militia arrived at the Majestic the day after Rácz’s release and marched the captives to the banks of the Danube, where nearly all of them were murdered.
This episode was just one of several other perilous encounters. She was nearly executed, just after the siege of Budapest ended, by the local communist council, accused of being a Nazi collaborator. She was receiving her last rites when she herself was unexpectedly rescued. Rácz and her family left Hungary after the uprising in 1956.
It wasn’t until 1980 that Rácz’s wartime rescue activities came to light. She was visiting her former home with her daughter, Monica Porter, a London based journalist. Monica was four years old when she was last in the villa, so her mother took her on a tour of the rooms. As they got to the basement her mother remarked, "…and this is where we hid the Jews".
Monica Porter subsequently wrote Deadly Carousel, an account of her mother's life during these months. This resulted in her mother being honoured by Yad Vashem, as Righteous Among The Nations, in 1991. The book makes for gripping reading; it’s a remarkable story. Vali Rácz was a superstar but always lived by her values of integrity, compassion, and humility.
I wrote the song from the perspective of a young Jewish woman, Vera Somló, who was thrown into the room where Rácz had been held since her arrest with forty others. Somló survived the march down to the Danube, thanks in part to the inability of the Arrow Cross militiamen to keep count of their prisoners. Her picture can be seen in the video, in the left hand panel of the newspaper page.
Vali Rácz’s Wikipedia entry
Monica Porter talking about her book, Deadly Carousel, at the Hungarian Cultural Centre in London, 2014
For Hungarian readers: Deadly Carousel is going to be published in Hungarian, as Halálos Körhinta, in June 2019 and can be ordered from these outlets:
A website dedicated to Vali Rácz's life and work can be found at:
https://www.valiracz.com
Words and Music: Robert Severin
Strings Arranged by Innes Watson
String Quartet: Innotet
Violin 1: Seonaid Aitken
Violin 2: Innes Watson
Viola: Patsy Reid
Cello: Alice Allen
Backing Vocals: Seonaid Aitken, Innes Watson, Robert Severin
Recorded by and mixed by Andrea Gobbi at GloWorm Recording, West Regent Street, Glasgow.
© 2019 Robert Severin
They called you the nightingale
Of the silver screen
I heard you on the radio
You smiled from magazines
The barbed wire on the window
Was scraping at the pane
When you sat down by my side
I knew I’d see my home again
Nightingale, sing to me
When you sing, I am free
Nightingale, sing to me
When you sing, we are free
They brought me to this fortress
From their vipers’ den
I couldn’t give them answers
They’d have my friends condemned
You saw my wounds wouldn’t heal
We hadn’t slept for days
You sang to us about the sea
While searchlights prowled for prey
Nightingale, sing to me
When you sing, I am free
Nightingale, sing to me
When you sing, we are free
You turned your back on limelight
For the role of your life
Death defying masquerades
High stakes charades
With the wrong kind of stars
Nightingale, sing to me
When you sing, I am free
Nightingale, sing to me
When you sing, we are free
Nightingale, sing to me
When you sing, we are free
The World Will Still Be Beautiful
This song was inspired by a remarkable film I saw at the Glasgow Film Theatre in August 2018. It was made by a Glasgow based independent filmmaker, May Miles Thomas. The link between Hungary and Scotland is embodied by May Miles Thomas’s mother-in-law, Erica Thomas. It is a compelling story. The film is beautifully crafted and the exquisitely detailed sound design is highly effective in adding to the immersive viewing experience. I drew the title of the song from the film’s last lines.
The link to the website for the film is below. It also includes an excellent blog about the film's production process.
Based on the life of my late mother-in-law, Erica Thomas, ‘Voyageuse’ is a mix of romance, science and conspiracy drawn directly from her archive of personal films, photographs, letters and objects. In a compelling performance by Siân Phillips, the film depicts Erica and her family’s role in the most profound events of the twentieth century: WW2, the Cold War and the decline of the British Empire; an era fading from living memory.
From her birthplace in rural Hungary to Great Britain via the US, Antarctica and Outer Space, Erica’s journey takes place in fragments of time in her incisive but troubled mind. Seeking solace in the past, she conflates middle-class domesticity with a sinister blueprint for global domination, with her mother cast as a latter day Mata Hari; her father, a technocrat and the model for Ian Fleming’s Bond villains; her older brother and nemesis, Eddi, enlisted by MI6 at Cambridge, and her cousin, Thomas Polgar, ex-OSS and a leading light of the CIA.
To make ‘Voyageuse’ – less a biopic than a psychobiography – I have followed in Erica’s footsteps, documenting all the places where she had lived, studied and worked. My aim: to recreate her state of mind, not as some cautionary tale of how not to live but to understand what it means when the future is outweighed by the past, a prospect faced by us all.
This blog describes my journey and the many creative decisions involved along the way: from writing the screenplay to the shoot; through the many stages of post production to completion. During the next phase of this project I face a new challenge: to reach an audience. While I still have far to travel, I hope by making “Voyageuse” I’ve fulfilled my promise to Erica by giving her story a gentler and more redemptive ending.
The film is available to rent through Vimeo at £5 for 30 days access.
From Vimeo
When Erica Thomas died in 2004 she left behind family photos, films, documents and objects dating back over a hundred years. They revealed experiences her children knew nothing of.
Born in Hungary in 1933, Erica came to England in 1938. Despite her private schooling and studies at Cambridge and Oxford, she struggled to "become English" and to belong. Though always feeling an outsider, her career drew her to the dark heart of Cold War science. She faced a world of compromise, fear and betrayal; her psychological struggles increasingly reflected the trauma of world events.
Spanning 70 years, travelling from Romania to Britain, via America, Antarctica and outer space, Voyageuse reveals one woman's ordinary life, lived through extraordinary times.
Starring Sian Phillips, Voyageuse is entirely handmade by May Miles Thomas.
From cruel Carpathia
To cold Calton Hill
By way of Jupiter
An alien, still
You made the pieces fit
But I lost you so soon
To make some sense of it
I tried to believe
The world will still be beautiful
The world will still be beautiful
When you are gone
When you are gone
Sunrise gold
On the old limes’ new green
Blackbird sings
Its welcome to spring
My voyage is near its end
I’ll return to the stars
Time has failed to mend
This tear in my heart
The world will still be beautiful
The world will still be beautiful
When we are gone
When we are gone
I searched for you in my dreams
I found you once in thirty years
A moment’s joy in the void
I miss you so much
You made the pieces fit
I miss you so much
The world will still be beautiful
The world will still be beautiful
Beautiful
Beautiful
Images used with the kind permission of May Miles Thomas
Words and Music: Robert Severin
Strings Arranged by Innes Watson
String Quartet: Innotet
Violin 1: Seonaid Aitken
Violin 2: Innes Watson
Viola: Patsy Reid
Cello: Alice Allen
Backing Vocals: Seonaid Aitken, Innes Watson
Recorded by and mixed by Andrea Gobbi at GloWorm Recording, West Regent Street, Glasgow.
© 2019 Robert Severin
Crimson Burned the Night
Crimson Burned the Night
This song is about another connection between Hungary and Scotland. It was inspired by something I came across while rummaging in a Budapest junk shop in 2003.
The shop was in Dob utca in the former Jewish Quarter in the 7th district, which is in now more often described as 'the party quarter'. The junk shop had old kitchen dresser with a cupboard full of old magazines in which I found an old ledger. It turned out to be a register of residents from a nearby apartment building which still stands across the road from the main synagogue.
The building was designated as a ‘Yellow Star House’ in the summer of 1944. It stood within the boundaries of the Jewish ghetto which was surrounded by a wall, in November, until the arrival of Soviet forces in January 1945.
The handwritten word for ‘air raid protection’ (Légoltalmi) on the front cover’s label indicated that it was in use during WW2. It contained not only the details of the regular residents of Wesselényi utca 6, but also Jewish families who were ordered out their own homes to addresses designated by the authorities in June 1944. This would make it easier for the authorities to facilitate subsequent deportations to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. It was not unusual for a two roomed apartment to be inhabited by up to and over 40 people during the ghetto’s existence. Budapest’s Jewish community was the last one to remaining in Europe after the provincial deportations of their Jewish populations.
It wasn’t until some months after I returned home that I discovered two sheets of squared paper folded between the end paper and the cover of the register. They were carbon copies of an inventory that a Jewish resident had made, listing their household’s entire portable property, down to the last handkerchief.
These inventories had to be typed in triplicate and submitted to the ministry of finance by the last week of June 1944. The goods then became the property of the state and had to be accounted for once the members of the household were deported. The inventories were checked and signed off by the building supervisor/concierge and had to retain a copy. The householders also were required to keep a copy, too. I donated the register and inventory to the Holocaust Documentation and Memorial Centre in Budapest in November 2019.
I was able to find the details of the family to which the inventory related in the register. My further research into the family members revealed an unusual connection with Scotland.
A Google search revealed nothing about Dr Róbert Gábor (see update below). However a search using his wife's maiden name, Ibolya Drucker yielded an astonishing result (Ibolya is Hungarian for Violet):
82.Ibolya Robertne Drucker or Gabor, Wesselenyi 6, Budapest, Hungary
She began her journey to spend Christmas with her son in New York, from her long time home in Budapest. It came to an abrupt and tragic end over the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland, on the night of the 21st December, 1988. She was the oldest passenger on flight Pan Am 103
In Hungarian/Magyarul:
Roncsok és holttestek záporoztak alá az égből a mit sem sejtő skót városkára
Ibolya's sons left Hungary in 1956 and settled in the USA. Her younger son, Ivan, taught at UCLA Medical School, where he specialised in pyschoanalysis, and later became a successful international business consultant. He died in 2007. I've not been able to discover anything about his bother, Peter.
Update August 2021:
I was astonished to receive an email from the United States in August 2021: 'That song is about my grandmother'. The song had reached Ibolya's descendants. What is more remarkable, her eldest son, Peter, is alive and well, having retired from his medical practice in Beverly Hills six years ago, at the age of 83. Peter very kindly sent me a copy of his autobiography that he had written for his extended family (A Journey Through Interesting times: Budapest-Los Angeles). It is a fascinating, moving as well as an uplifting story, worthy of a film. The reason my research couldn't locate him is because his first initial 'E' (Erwin) should have preceded Peter in my searches. The photograph at Ibolya's side was taken at Peter's graduation from McGill University in May 1963, the day before his wedding to his wife, Thea.
Peter clarified how his mother came to be aboard Pan Am 103. She had been booked to fly with TWA to Los Angeles. However, Pan Am staff at Frankfurt asked if she could help translate for a young Hungarian family that who had not been to the US before and spoke no English. Being the kind person she was Ibolya readily agreed, but it meant that she had to miss her own flight. Her baggage went on to Los Angeles while Pan Am booked her onto 103 to connect for her onward flight. Ibolya's family had spent many summers with her in Hungary and she and her husband, Robert, visited them in the US once travel to the west was made possible by the Hungarian regime at the time. Robert had indeed survived the war and lived to his seventies.
It took me three complete rewrites to arrive at this version of the song. It was a well and truly rewarded effort as well as a privilege to write.
You can listen to it here:
Those June days were dark as night
She thought they’d be her last
Making lists of all they had
Of their stolen past
Typed with carbons for death’s rubber stamp
Count the teaspoons once more
The children’s shoes and table lamps
The doctor’s gown on the door
Walls went up, the gates locked down
Crowded frozen floors
Christmas Eve brought the siege
Hell tore open its bowels
Flames of crimson burned the night
The world she knew long gone
Life by trial hour by hour
No shelter from the guns
Danger past, walls torn down
She put on her doctor’s gown
She blessed her boys when tanks returned
A healer’s gift for their new found home
Half the world away
She looked back while wrapping gifts
For Christmas with her son
Forty-four years before
She thought their time had come
One more trip across the sea
Her son had booked her flight
She flew on Pan Am 103
And crimson burned the night
She met her fate among the clouds
When crimson burned the night
When crimson burned the night
Crimson Gallery
Letter from Home
My aunt Juli showed me this photograph one afternoon in February 2018, while trawling through several decades worth of family albums, during one of my trips to Hungary. I was struck by this particular image. It turned out to be a professional portrait of my aunt, from 1958, when she was seventeen. She was a student at the premier secretarial college in Budapest at the time. She and a girlfriend thought it would be fun to get their photos taken during a free afternoon.
My aunt told me that as the tuition fees were a considerable burden on her parents resources, she decided to cover the two year course in just one year. Such was her aptitude that the director of the college told her that if she stayed for one more year, a position at the Hungarian parliament would be guaranteed.
She realised that this was an important opportunity, but she declined the offer in order to spare parents from further hardship. Her life would have been very different had she felt able to continue with her studies.
There is no link to Scotland within the song, but I took her for her first ever Indian meal, at Mother India's Café, in Glasgow, a few years ago. My aunt is an amazing cook and the contented silence in which she savoured the dishes we ordered spoke volumes about her enjoyment of Mother India's cuisine.
Click on image or here to listen.
She opened the letter from home
While coffee was starting to brew
Her mother’s neat hand on rough squared paper
Just like when she was at school
Are you eating enough
Do you miss my baking
The city is so far away
She turned down the flame on the stove
And stood by the window to read
Her father’s cold voice called out from the page
She felt the need to sit down
Times have been hard
There’s work to be done
Your place is back on the farm
She dared raise her eyes
From the millstone to the stars
To a life to be lived
To love and be loved
Burnt coffee splattered the stove
Ink ran wild in her teardrops
She pulled on her shoes, ran over the cobbles
To the castle walls
Farewell to the city
Her river and bridges
Their sorrow and beauty
And to her dreams
She dared raise her eyes
From the millstone to the stars
To a life to be lived
To love and be loved
She dared raise her eyes
From the millstone to the stars
To a life to be lived
To love and be loved
Years go by
Some things never change
Life goes on
Heartbreak remains
She dared raise her eyes
From the millstone to the stars
To a life to be lived
To love and be loved
She dared raise her eyes
From the millstone to the stars
To a life to be lived
To love and be loved
A life to be lived
To love and be loved
Time Heals (But the Healed heart Still Hurts) - Katalin Karády
Katalin Karády (née Kanczler) (1910-1990) was the era defining movie star diva of wartime Hungary. I felt compelled to write a song about about her, as she was awarded the status of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, as was Jane Haining (Star in My Shadow) and fellow chanteuse and film star, Vali Rácz ( Nightingale).
Karády was the youngest of seven children, growing up in impoverished circumstances in the southern outskirts of Budapest. Her father was a cobbler's assistant and was addicted to alcohol and the racecourse. Losses would mean beatings for the whole family but Karády also remembers presents for all when his horse came in.
In 1936, a widely read journalist and theatre critic, Zoltán Egyed, spotted Karády in a Budapest bar while out for a drink with an associate. Egyed bet his colleague that he could make Karády a superstar. He persuaded her to adopt her stage name and sponsored her training in singing and acting. Karády was cast in the starring role of her first film Halálos Tavasz (Deadly Spring) alongside Hungary's most admired leading man, Pál Jávor, in 1939. The film created a sensation. Her striking image and uniquely sultry voice ensured that Karády became an iconic Femme Fatale overnight.
Both Karády and co-star were outspoken critics of the nazification of Hungary. Karády was prosecuted for rescuing Jewish friends and colleagues from forced labour battalions on the eastern front, incurring substantial court fines on each occasion. The far-right insisted on banning her from all media for her Jewish sympathies and antipathy towards Germany. They got their wish when Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944. (A close friend and confidant of hers in New York, a theatre manager who had left Hungary in 1956, said that she had been presented with a porcelain vase from Hitler, at a diplomatic function in Budapest, which she promptly hurled to the floor. Interview broadcast by RTL Hunagary, 2005.)
Karády made 22 films between 1939 and 1944, when she was arrested on the film set by the Gestapo, on April 18th. This was exactly a week before their arrest of Jane Haining. It is quite probable that they were both at Gestapo HQ at the same time during their interrogations. The Gestapo accused Karády of espionage. Her famed co-star, Pál Jávor, also suffered arrest and imprisonment. The charges against Karády were more or less based the plot of her previous film, Machita, in which she played a role evoking Mata Hari. Her fiancé was the head of military intelligence and was involved in moves to take Hungary out of the war.
Karády was imprisoned, in solitary confinement, for three months, during which she was was nearly beaten to death. She was subjected to appalling abuse throughout her captivity. Her release was made possible by close friends of her fiancé. Karády returned to her ransacked home and remained under close police surveillance. She was undeterred in her humanitarian efforts. On one occasion she bribed an Arrow Cross execution squad with her jewellery to rescue 30 Jewish children from being shot into the Danube. All whom Karády saved and sheltered survived the war.
The post-war communist regime dismissed Karády as a symbol of the previous system. She finally left Hungary in 1951 with her wardrobe manager and a songwriter, along with her close friend who had made all her hats for her films. Her family were severely punished for her defection. Karády's films and recordings were banned until 1979. The reshowing of Deadly Spring and the release of a compilation of her recordings revived her cult following among across the generations.
After a short period in Europe, Karády and her milliner and close friend, Irma Frank, sailed to Sao Paolo, after being refused visa for the US by the FBI (Karády didn't like flying). They opened a boutique in the city for their creations to great success. There she met Marlene Dietrich on her tour of South America in the mid-60s. Dietrich introduced Karády to the Kennedy brothers who asked her why she wasn't living in the US. Karády replied that it was because she was accused by the Nazis of being a Communist and by the Communists of being a Nazi. The Kennedys assured Karády that they would look into the matter. She was granted a visa to enter the US within three months of their meeting.
Karády and Irma Frank established a very exclusive and successful milliner's salon in Manhattan; La Rochelle, at 700 Madison Avenue (it is still possible to find some of La Rochelle's hats on eBay). It was patronised by Hollywood stars such as Shirley MacLaine and New York high society. Karády would remain at the rear of the shop and avoided contact with other Hungarians. She shunned the cameras but was persuaded to make some new recordings to perform for a charity benefit concert at a Hungarian church in New York in 1973. The event was compèred by Vali Rácz's (Nightingale) husband, Péter Halász. Their daughter, Monica Porter, told me that she remembers meeting Karády when they went to visit her while living in New York, but she doesn't recollect there being any discussion about her mother's and Karády's humanitarian activities.
One of her regular clients was Nancy Reagan who was well known for her extravagant spending on her wardrobe. The song begins with Karády behind her curtain, reflecting on her memories of Budapest of forty years before, putting the final touches on the hat ordered by the First Lady.
Karády's life has inspired books and films with a highly acclaimed new stage production currently touring Hungarian cities. The play portrays her time in Nazi captivity. Katalin Karády had a remarkable life that encompassed meteoric stardom, outstanding courage and great tragedy. By the end of 1989 she had decided she could visit Budapest again, but died after a long illness in February of the next year. Her coffin lay in state at St Stephen's Cathedral in Budapest before her burial in the Buda hills.
She works behind the curtain
In her salon late at night
The milliner to the stars
Holds the pillbox to the light
She smoothes the chiffon ribbon
Under feathers and the lace
A confection in scarlet
For the First Lady’s date
It brings to mind one she wore
In a film about doomed love
Made in black and white
But she called for matching gloves
Shown back home again
After thirty years taboo
Her hits on shortwave
It feels sweet but bitter too
Time heals
But the healed heart still hurts
Time heals
But the healed heart still hurts
She yearns to see the Danube
But fears she can’t go back
Her sleep is often broken
By ghosts of men in black
Nearly killed for being human
Her light refused to die
Home is now Manhattan
Her client’s due at nine
Time heals
But the healed heart still hurts
Time heals
But the healed heart still hurts
They say time heals
But the healed heart still hurts
Actress by accident
Diva by design
Voice of a dying age
Chanteuse of the lost
They say time heals
But the healed heart still hurts
Time heals,
But the healed heart still hurts
Blank Page
The first assignment set by Sir Ray Davies on his songwriting course I attended in 2017, was for the participants to write a song about themselves. This was then to be performed to the group the following day. After the initial shock and anguish, I managed to write something. It was was more or less garbage but the bridge, 'the why? of the song', turned out to be what I needed for this track. It's taken me until now to fulfil that assignment.
Songwriting guru Prof. Pat Pattison of Berklee in Boston maintains that crap makes great fertiliser.
Green cardboard suitcase
Mothball scented memories
Sepia whispers
Haunt my troubled reverie
Locks long broken
Damp and rust laid claim
Portraits, spectres
A longing I can’t explain
There will always be
A blank page in the album
There will always be
A blank page in the album
The page I left too long to fill
We were outsiders
Always had to spell our name
Family values
Repression, guilt and shame
There’s no refuge
From what can’t be unseen
There’s no point in blame
Forget what might have been
There will always be
A blank page in the album
There will always be
A blank page in the album
I couldn’t bring myself to fill
So long children
I’ve run out of time
This had to be
The end of the line
I can’t be another
Link in that chain
There will always be
A blank page in the album
There will always be
A blank page in the album
The space I’ll never fill
Elena
This song is inspired by the story of an older Ukrainian woman who became a refugee as a result of the Russian invasion of her home. My collaborator on this song, Dutch poet Linda de Bruijn, was moved to write about Elena’s story after talking to her about her experiences, at a friend's party who had sponsored Elena’s settlement in the country. Linda's poem in turn inspired me to set her words to music.
The song describes how 63-year-old Elena flees her war-torn country with nothing but a plastic bag full of her remaining possessions and a one-way bus ticket.
The experience of my own family history compelled me to tell this story and sing about the plight of refugees in protest against the war in Ukraine. My parents fled Hungary in 1956 when the Soviet Union invaded the country. I wanted to record this single to keep Elena's story, and those like her, alive and to protest against the tragedy and suffering of the innocent caused by the horrors of war.
Elena, sixty-three today
Carries her world in a plastic bag
Hurries to the bus
A one-way ticket is all she has
Her son stays behind
To defend their ravaged home
The ride is short but hard
Into the lone unknown
Haunted houses, sleeping men
Burning cars, a holed white flag
All her memories of a life now gone
Packed tightly in her bag
Elena wants someone to explain
Who thought that war’s a winning game?
Elena, sixty-three years old
Same heavy bag, ticket and tags
As the woman next to her
Shivers in her rags
Both exhausted and weary with fear
Both survived the day
Leaving everything behind
But what they can't unsee
Haunted houses, sleeping men…
She wipes away her tears
But the images remain
Elena wants someone to explain
Who thought that war’s a winning game?
Words and Music by Linda de Bruijn and Robert Severin
