David Cormack, Ernest Newman in ‘Naziland’: In Search of Otto Strobel

November 2019, Volume 13, Number 3, 32–52.

Characteristic Utterances

VERA NEWMAN TO ERNEST NEWMAN
One day, when I was walking in the town [Salzburg], I saw King Edward walking with Mrs. Simpson and a group of friends. It was a gay and colourful party, and it seemed wrong that our King, so soon after the death of his father, should be in such company, dressed in shorts and a bright sports shirt.

ERNEST NEWMAN TO VERA NEWMAN
By the way, your spelling is getting simply awful. I haven’t space in this issue [sic] to enumerate all the mistakes, but for heaven’s sake do something about it, or I shall have to get a new sekketary bird, and I don’t want to do that as I’m fond of the present one. Nice lill’ fella!

ERNEST NEWMAN TO VERA NEWMAN
All well here and hope same with you. Don’t know where you are, but hope somewhere by now. Weather here is grand – much hotter than in Naziland. I went to see our team play yesterday [the Tadworth Cricket Team]. As it was Bank Holiday there were millions of spectators – well, fifty, at any rate.

Ernest Newman detested the Nazis and what they did to their country, their people and their culture, and what they threatened to do to ours.