Latest news with #TheEinsteinVendetta
Extra.ie
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Ryan Tubridy: 'Sarah tells her story with extraordinary dignity and insight'
I migrated to Times Radio last Monday for a three-hour juggernaut of a show that covered everything from Ukraine to UK Labour Party tax U-turns and on to more feature-based stories, including an interview with Thomas Harding, author of a fascinating book called The Einstein Vendetta. Towards the end of the show, an 18-year-old Irish woman joined me in the studio to talk about her desperately sad story. I first met her when she was just nine years old, and again when she was 13. So, here we were, five years later, in a London radio studio, but this time to talk about her book and her involvement in a much-talked-about Netflix documentary. Sarah Corbett Lynch has had a very unfair run at life since she was a baby. Her birth mother, Mags, died when Sarah was just 12 weeks old, leaving her father, Jason, to look after baby Sarah and her brother Jack. Sarah Corbett Lynch. Pic: Tom Honan Most of you will know the story, but as a brief reminder, Molly Martens arrived on the scene as an au pair. She and Jason fell in love, got married and moved to America to set up home. On the face of it, all was well until August 2, 2015, when Jason was beaten to death by Molly and her father, Tom Martens. What followed were endless court cases and appearances until the eventual conviction and subsequent release of Molly and Tom Martens. I won't get into the details here, as this is a reflection on Sarah herself. I was keen to have her on my Times Radio show on Monday because she is an exceptional person with a terrible story to tell, and yet she does it with extraordinary dignity and insight. Ryan Tubridy and Sarah Corbett Lynch. Pic: Supplied Her book, A Time For Truth, is a personal and difficult account of her life so far. She takes us through every detail of a story that fascinated the nation for so many years, offering intimate and thoughtful commentary along the way. She also participated in a recently released Netflix documentary, A Deadly American Marriage, which is not an easy watch but yet reinforces the image of Sarah and her family's dogged persistence for the truth and a need for justice on behalf of Jason Corbett. It was so good to reconnect with Sarah and with her aunt Tracey and uncle David, who were with her in London. Their bond is clearly unbreakable and, in their hands, the story of what happened will continue to be told for as long as they feel the world should know. Shobsy. Pic: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos In the last couple of years I spent hosting the Late Late Show, we enjoyed introducing lots of new Irish singers to the country. One of my absolute favourites was Shobsy, a charismatic and pitch-perfect performer whose appearances were always utterly compelling and whose voice drifted from smooth bass to heavenly falsetto. I'll never forget his version of Bronski Beat's Smalltown Boy, which he sang for us after a week that saw fatal attacks on two gay men in Ireland. It always stayed with me as the lyrics were so relevant and the performance so compassionate. I was delighted to watch Shobsy command a crowd in London last weekend, reminding me of everyone from Roy Orbison to Elton John, as well as being very much his own man. It was a joy to watch him own the stage and bring the punters to their feet. Here's hoping he'll break the London music scene and then keep going to the very top. I was very fortunate to be invited to a small but intriguing lunch at The French House in Soho last weekend. The invitation came courtesy of Ewan Venters, who is currently looking after one of my all-time favourite designers, Paul Smith. I was a little late, as my radio show ends at 1 pm, so I had to jump on a city bike (the quickest way to navigate this city) and make it before 1:30 pm. There were only two tables, so I swiftly sought out my name place (complete with RT-monogrammed Paul Smith card wallet – a touch of class!) and before I knew it, I realised I was beside the incomparable actor and foodie, Stanley Tucci, and across from the always amiable comedian, John Bishop. We covered everything from Conclave to US politics and the state of British comedy. Paul himself joined the chat, as did Stephen Fry and Vernon Kay, among others, in this small but fascinating crew. By 4 pm, I was back on the bike and homeward bound to meet my brother, who was in town for the weekend, which was tremendous fun, but that's for another day!
Telegraph
05-04-2025
- Telegraph
The unsolved case of the Einstein family murder
Thomas Harding writes at the start of The Einstein Vendetta that Italians have two words for memory: ricordo – that which is subjective, personal and emotional – and memoria – that which is objective, collective and cerebral. Harding is particularly good on the first count: this narrative will tug at your heartstrings in some places and prompt righteous outrage in others. The Einstein in question is Albert's first cousin Robert, whose wife Nina and daughters Luce and Cici were murdered by the Nazis at their Tuscan villa Il Forcado in August 1944. Robert himself, fearful of being captured because of his surname and Jewish background, had been hiding out in nearby woods, and didn't break cover even when Nina, coerced by German soldiers who had overtaken the villa, went out into the countryside and called for him. The couple had hoped that the Nazis would eventually give up and move on, both because Nina and the girls were not themselves Jewish and because British forces were advancing rapidly on the area. Instead, the Nazis machine-gunned Nina and the girls before torching the villa and leaving a sign proclaiming the family, without evidence, 'guilty of espionage' and 'in constant touch with the enemy'. For Robert, the grief and guilt were unbearable: he took a fatal overdose of sleeping tablets the following July on what would have been his and Nina's 32nd wedding anniversary. Harding, whose previous books include a biography of his great-uncle, Nazi-hunter Hanns Alexander, tells all this with verve and compassion. He captures beautifully the general atmosphere of wartime Tuscany, the fear the women must have felt in their last hours, and the inhuman toll the executions took on Robert: a partisan fighter and a priest had to talk him out of shooting himself in the immediate aftermath by emphasising his duty towards his adopted nieces Lorenza and Paola Mazzetti, also present that fateful day but mercifully spared. Harding is also excellent on the investigations of the case, both at the time by U.S. Army Major Milton Wexler and then in the early part of this century by Italian and German researchers. The details of this 'slow, hard work. Real shoe-leather work' could in other hands be dry and dusty, but Harding makes them riveting: archival files pored over in search of vital clues, witnesses undone by failing memory, and always the hope that some small cosmic order will be restored by finding the man who ordered the shootings and on which basis. Three suspects – Clemens Theis, August Schmitz and Johann Riss – are identified, but there's no certainty as to which one of them (if any) it actually was: and now they're all dead, the truth may never be known. Where the book falters is not in this lack of a neat resolution, but in Harding's attempts to assign greater significance to the narrative than there is. He theorises that Robert may have been targeted because of Albert's criticism of the Nazi regime and help for the American war effort, but there's no concrete evidence for this, nor indeed for much else when it comes to Albert's connections with the story. Reduced to repeated supposition about Albert's reactions – 'must have been struck by', 'presumably he took some form of action', 'there is no record of how he responded' – and without proof of the titular vendetta against the world's most famous scientist, the book's entire raison d'être feels built on sand, with the Einstein name the only thing which makes this incident stand out among myriad other Nazi abominations. As the Florentine paper La Nazione del Popolo said at the time, 'the tragedy was lost in the din of cannon, tanks, aeroplanes, and the jubilation of the arrival of the Allies.' Harding also rather skates over the effect the murders had on the nieces Lorenza and Paola, who inherited Il Forcado, even though their stories are fascinating. Lorenza, who became a celebrated author and filmmaker, remained 'obsessed' with the case, still demanding action from, and making suggestions to, investigators well into her nineties. In contrast, the psychotherapist Paola took an altogether more accepting stance. 'It can't be overcome. One wonders: why do you live? To hate, or to love? The only response to cruelty is to live differently. The meaning of life is to take a path where you don't accept evil.' Harding's failure to properly examine these contrasting but equally compelling attitudes is a microcosm for the book's merits and flaws alike. He's good on the how, what, when, where and who – but he never really gets to the heart of the why.
