Difficult Knitting : Aesop Publications : 9781914938009 : 1914938003 : 14 Jul 2021 : In Difficult Knitting Eve Machin, born in Bristol in 1915, gives a rich account of a childhood divided between two worlds: a comfortable, quintessentially English upper middle class world of servants, horses, spacious houses, public school and stiff upper lip - the world of her English father. And the world of her mother, daughter of a wealthy, sophisticated and very numerous Jewish family in Vienna, who had married against their wishes. The marriage was catastrophic. Torn between a loving but alcoholic father, and a close but distinctly un-maternal mother, Eve's childhood is spent shuttling between England and Austria. In England she lives the privileged, outwardly happy life of a typical schoolgirl of the time, set against the backdrop of her parents' turbulent and irreparably broken marriage. School gives her refuge, where she develops the deep love of literature and poetry that would come t