Janet Wolff is Professor Emerita in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester. She is a renowned art historian and writer – and this is the launch of her fascinating new memoir ‘Austerity Baby‘.

Austerity Baby’ is a family history – an ‘oblique memoir’ that is digressive and surprising. The central underlying and repeated themes here are exile and displacement; lives (and deaths) during the Third Reich; mother-daughter and sibling relationships; the generational transmission of trauma and experience; transatlantic reflections; and the struggle for creative expression.

In the book, we encounter those displaced during the Second World War, cultural life in 1920s New York, the industrialist Henry Simon of Manchester, liberal British campaigner Eleanor Rathbone and reflections on the lives and images of spinsters.

Entry to this 5.30pm – 8pm book launch is free and refreshments are provided. If you wish to attend, RSVP to Bethan.Hirst@manchester.ac.uk.