Almost an Englishman

Within this great mound of words (there are at least 200,000 of them) there is a rather good book lurking. Its first merit is that it is very well written. The style is easy, lively, fresh, vernacular. The writing is devoid of clichés and prefabricated prose. Secondly, the story it has to tell is pleasantly exotic. The author was born shortly after the end of the first world war in eastern Germany. His mother, Wilhelmine, was the daughter of a Yorkshire clothing manufacturer, memorably called Abimelech Wainwright, and his depressed wife Elizabeth, who appears to have said nothing during the later years of her life. His father, Albrecht von Blumenthal, was the youngest son of a minor noble family. These two divorced, for reasons that will become clear, when Charles (or Wolfgang) was about four.

The question occurs to one, not why Wolf- gang should have changed his name to an English one in the late 1930s, but why he chose the particular names he did.