We were at the height of the Cold War when Wenckheim was writing, so global fear of the possibility of a nuclear exchange, and the resulting effects of radiation on the surviving population, were at their most alarming. Nevertheless, what…
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In September of 1975 Claudine Vattier wrote to say how pleased she was that we liked Wrangel Island; she thought it ‘intéressante’ and found the characters to be ‘chouettes' – cool. She recognised the difficulty of placing it! In passing, she…
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Claudine Vattier’s French translation of Wenckheim’s play arrived. La Terre de Wrangel, she called it; Wrangel Island, in English. It’s a real place. A sizeable island belonging to Russia, about five hundred miles west from Alaska. Today, it’s known as…
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In the summer of 1975, I was driving along the coast in the south of France on the way to visit a girl who’d been au pair to Michael Bialoguski. Michael was the self-appointed counter-espionage agent who’d outed Vladimir Petrov…
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