I wasn't in a hurry to read this, as I hadn't much enjoyed Edmund de Waal's last book about porcelain - and somehow it had passed me by that Letters to Camondo is very much a companion piece to The Hare with Amber Eyes, which I devoured twice. In fact, on a visit to Paris when I made a little pilgrimage along the Rue de Monceau (was that really ten years ago?????) I spotted the Musée Nissim de Camondo too near closing time to go in - but made a point of returning on my next trip. (Happy days when I could count on the occasional work jaunt to Paris!) At the time I'd wondered if de Waal's forebears, the Ephrussi family, had been acquainted with their neighbours a few doors down the street ... I was only a few pages into the book when the penny dropped, "Hang on, I know these people! I've been to this house!" And it all came vividly to life. But what a terribly sad story. Moise de Camondo, who built the house at 63 Rue de Monceau, lost his son in WW1 fighting for France and bequeathed the palatial house to the state as his memorial.

This is Moise's much younger wife Irène painted in girlhood by Renoir. They divorced after she had an affair with her husband's Italian stable master and she managed to survive WW2 by hiding out in Paris under her second husband's Italian name.

Here are Irène's two little sisters. The younger girl married a British officer and lived to a ripe old age. The little girl in blue died in Auschwitz, aged 69. So did Moise and Iréne's daughter Béatrice and her children Fanny, 22, and Bertrand, 20. Their story seems especially poignant at the moment when so many lives are in shreds. The book is a series of imaginary letters between de Waal and his 'friend' Camondo. It's not a page-turner like The Hare with Amber Eyes - but still completely riveting. I do wish the publishers had run to including a family tree, though!