Publications

The Passionate Countess Thun und Hohenstein and The British Ambassadors in Vienna

This book results from two fortuitous, perhaps serendipitous, discoveries. The first was the final resting place within the Clanwilliam archive in Belfast for the Countess Thun’s love letters to John Boyd. That provided a subject for a brief biography of a remarkable woman, the leading light of her day in Vienna. The second was the publication of Ambassador Sir Robert Murray Keith’s selected correspondence some thirty five years after his death in 1795. These two discoveries were as an odd pair of trousers and an odd jacket. But put together they made a handsome suit. A vivid picture of Viennese society at its zenith.

The Empress Maria Theresia gives way to her son Emperor Joseph who in turn gives way to his brother Emperor Leopold. The courts of all three were as magnificent as any in the world. There Gluck, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were taking the composition of new music to Everest like heights. Habsburg’s power within Europe was nurtured and guided by the great Chancellor, Prince Kaunitz. Vienna was the capital not just of Austria but of the wide Habsburg dominions stretching from the Balkans almost to the Baltic. The higher nobility of these dominions maintained palatial homes in Vienna wherever their ancestral estates might lie. Within this world Countess Thun excelled, first among equals, both as a salonniere and as a patron of Mozart and Beethoven.

A Divided Heart:

Walking the Jakobsweg in Austria: The Pilgrim Paths to Santiago de Compostelahenstein and The British Ambassadors in Vienna

An enthralling and eye-opening account of a long trek through the Austrian mountains. Mathew Thorpe didn’t set out to write a book. He didn’t plan to devote so much time to exploring the Austrian Jakobswege. But during a fortuitous visit shortly before retiring from his role as Head of International Family Justice, Thorpe was captivated by the glorious history and unrivalled natural beauty of these pilgrim trails….

Marking Time: My Family and I

Scratch beneath the surface of an ordinary British family and you never know what you might find: An Imperial Hofkanzler, a patron of Mozart and Beethoven, a Russian Fieldmarshall, a Calcutta merchant exporting opium to China, a donation that embarrassed and shamed the V&A. It sounds implausible but they are all here and many more besides.