Personal life

The bare bones. Married Anna in Vienna, had Eva, came to Britain in 1928. They separated and she went back to Berlin with Eva. He worked in Edinburgh, as shown in the chapter on career. Rented the farmhouse on the island of Ensay, fished, was very social in Edinburgh. Met Mary Barton but don’t know when. Lived in London, started being a ‘donor’ in at least 1943. During war, home office interested in what he was doing on Ensay. BBC work, briefly. Lab work with Rabinovitch. Married Mary B., had Jonathan 1944. House on Skye, Corry Lodge outside Broadford.

Parkinsons. Like boats, kayaking, dogs, never went back to Austria. Not observant Jewish. Sister Kitty very devoted. She and Oscar visited Jonathan at school and supported BPW.

He donated funds £1 1/- to the Spanish Workers' Fund in 1936. Quite probably many of his friends and colleagues were active, as documented in eg:

(PHOTO ref: BPW's contribution to Spanish Workers Fund)

The following excerpts are from emails to a couple of half siblings, generously shared by Jonathan, and giving us more information about BPW:

"BPW and the Goya sketches: they were given to him, so my Mother told me, by the Spanish Republicans. BPW had been involved in, or had organised aid during the civil war. I am not very clear as to exactly what aid was involved. I do remember my Mother talking about the delivery of lorries; no doubt they would have been carrying cargo as well. In the documents concerning BPW’s application for British citizenship, there is a reference somewhere as to hearsay that BPW may have been gun-running! Presumably no proof existed, otherwise I guess his application might have been rejected.

16th January 2018:

"I met BPW’s first wife, Anna Gmeyner, only once, when she was an old lady. When I was a small kid I went with BPW to see her in a charming old cottage somewhere in the home counties,. Frankly, I don’t remember her at all, although I do recall getting some nice cake for tea! I really don’t know much about her except for what I found in the National Archives about BPW’s application for British citizenship. The authorities (Home office, police etc) were like to grant him citizenship, but were equivocal about his wife as she had been involved in supporting? working with? the communist Scottish Miners Union. Presumably her general record as a communist activist didn’t help either. Eva Ibbotson, her daughter, hardly ever talked about her except to say she was a 'difficult woman’. I don’t think there was much love lost between them. Her great granddaughter, who calls herself Irya Gmeyner recently house sat for us for two weeks here in Sicily. Irya is the daughter of Eva Ibbotson’s oldest child, Toby, who lives in Sweden.Toby was a classics scholar at Cambridge, but after leaving , married a Swedish girl, and started a Steiner school 3 hrs drive north of Stockholm, a school which he still runs part time now.So Irya is really an Ibbotson, but admired her feminist Gr.Grandmother so much as to change her surname.

You are right about the apparent broad brush of BPW’s “dislike of Austrians'. I guess he really meant that he disliked the disturbing political and social situation at the time, just as a very longstanding French friend told me recently that she ‘can’t stand the Brits’ because of Brexit. In fact, she and her husband lived in London for many years and loved it, and still have numerous close English friends they see regularly. See what I mean.

BPW if not an atheist, was certainly an agnostic, and he didn’t appear to have any interest in Judaism. I don’t think he ever went to a synagogue, and we never celebrated any Jewish festival, nor, until I was an adult, did I even know of their existence! The whole Jewish ‘thing' was a rare starter in our household,. As a child it meant nothing to me. As I grew up and became aware that BPW’s parents had been Jewish, it still meant nothing more to me than the fact that my Mother’s family were protestants.As a child and later on I saw a lot of Kitty and Otto, who were observant Jews, but again it meant little to me. I suppose that being brought up in a family where both my parents had friends and acquaintances from very diverse racial or religious backgrounds, neither of these counted for much.I never heard comments from my parents that he/she is a Catholic, a Jew, or Moslem or even pointing out that a colleague of theirs was a refugee, that he/she was an Austrian, Hungarian or Russian (like Rabinovich). In respect of Jewishness, what may have been the case is that BPW, Kitty and Otto deliberately avoided much talk of it, perhaps because they wanted me to grow up without Angst, so in their minds sparing me the connection to the relatively recent horror of all horrors suffered by Jews. Who knows. It was only when I reached my thirties and forties, that I began to be interested in BPW’s and his family's history. It was clear to me by then that I had some Jewish and/or middle European characteristics. But was it clear to my friends? I had no idea, so I asked for their take: 'you may sound like an Englishman’ they said ', but you are certainly far from typical’ And then one ore two added ‘were your parents Jewish?' Knowledge of my Jewish blood didn’t figure much in my life, but then in late middle age I found myself deeply interested in books by Jewish authors such as Philip Roth, Bashevis Singer, Primo Levi, and so on, It is a cultural interest, in no way a religious one.

When we had a holiday home in Suffolk, my mother sometimes went to Church, and once or twice BPW and I came too. Trouble was, on one of the rare occasions we were at a service he got the giggles about something or other and infected me too. The embarrassment!, So, although a good giggle as an adult is thoroughly enjoyable, I didn’t dare to go with him again for some time. This must have been after his baptism by his friend Stefan Hopkinson that I told you about - 'hedging his bets’ BPW said - before his dangerous operation on the brain. In spite of the flippant remark, I think he was probably happy to oblige Stefan since to BPW one belief was as good as another. I never saw him take any particular interest in Jewish culture and certainly he had no involvement in the religion."