What is it about food and cooking that attracts academics and high-powered government officials? In the 1980s, Oxford graduate Nigella Lawson was known chiefly by the London literati as the Spectator’s chief book and food critic, and later, the Sunday Times deputy literary editor. By 1998 however the rigours of literature and academe had given way to the sensual embrace of cooking, making Nigella a culinary superstar. In 1998 her first cookbook How To Eat sold 300,000 copies, followed by more best sellers, How To Be A Domestic Goddess and Nigella Bites. By 1999 she began presenting the first of dozens of cooking series, found fame in the USA and today remains the UK’s queen of cuisine. Her sales include over 8 million cookery books worldwide and her cookware range, Living Kitchen, has been valued at £7 million. As career changes go, Nigella’s has not only been been massively public, but spectacularly long lasting.

In the US there are more dramatic examples of women leaping from the ordered world of politics and finance to the inspiration and hit-or-miss experimentation of cooking. Julia Child, the original US doyenne of gastronomy who brought classic French cooking into the homes of middle class Americans after the Second World War, who died in 2004, remains an icon. Several years ago Meryl Streep starred as the legendary foodie in a Hollywood biopic; today she is portrayed by British actress Sarah Lancashire in Julia, Sky TV’s current series.

However, the early life of the woman whose cookery books and coast to coast TV series turned her into a celebrity is surprisingly shadowy. Few know that her first job at the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA, was developing a formula for shark repellent. The OSS was home to the US intelligence services and, in wartime, protecting shipwrecked sailors and other military personnel from being killed by sharks was crucial. Since sharks could also set off mines planted by enemy submarines the repellent was vital to US navy defences. Once she developed the repellent, Child became Chief of the OSS registry making her privy to all classified documents including every top secret message coming in and out of the OSS. It was only when Julia married a fellow OSS official, quit her job and accompanied him to France that she tasted French food and enrolled in a Cordon Bleu cookery course. Food remained her passion until her death in 2004.

Equally dramatic is the career transition of America’s “Barefoot Contessa”, aka Ina Garten, herself deeply inspired by Julia Child’s books and TV series. Garten’s gourmet shop in the Hamptons, her TV cooking series and the Barefoot Contessa brand became multi million business – all because Garten gave up her previous career out of boredom. Not that it was any ordinary job – in her late twenties, she was employed as a budget analyst at the White House throughout the Gerald Ford and the Jimmy Carter administrations. First employed in the Office of Management and Budget, she was promoted to the role of budget strategist working exclusively on the US nuclear energy policy.

Boredom had begun to set in when, still in her thirties, she spotted an ad for a small grocery shop called The Barefoot Contessa which was up for sale in the chic resort of Westhampton, Long Island. Having recently taught herself to cook, she bought the shop on a whim and abandoned her Washington career to turn the venue into one of New York’s most widely publicised elite gourmet stores. After moving from the original 400 sq. ft shop to new premises measuring over 3,000 sq. ft and radically expanding the business, eighteen years later she sold the shop but retained ownership of the building and its name. Approaching fifty, she wanted to write and pass on her expertise: several years on she became a best selling cookery writer, carried out business on her high flying Barefoot Contessa website and landed her own Food Network TV Show.

Like her idol Julia Child, Garten pursued her passion despite a previous successful career. Interviewed by the New York Times she confessed: “My job in Washington was intellectually exciting and stimulating but it wasn’t me at all”. She also disarmingly, admitted being a novice in the world of retail when she began her business. “To say I knew nothing about what I was getting myself into is an understatement” she confided to a journalist. “I’d never run a business before, never even had employees working for me.”

I find such stories both inspiring and instructive. From becoming immersed in cookery or some other creative activity, to starting a new business, learning different skills and sharing them with others, becoming a professional and selling one’s creations privately, at markets or online, the opportunities to change one’s profession are greater in the 2020s than at any other time. Switching careers – and doing so successfully – is possible. Julia Child and Ina Garten became spectacularly successful and made millions. Not everyone will be as lucky – but they do show how us how far hard work, courage, passion and determination can lead us.

Have you ever asked yourself these questions?

Am I happy and fulfilled in my job?

How seriously would I consider changing my career?

Would I be prepared to retrain for two or more years to qualify for an entirely different profession?

Could I endure the doubts, uncertainty and drop in earnings while learning new skills?

Have I enough confidence and determination to perfect those skills and become a professional?

Could I cope with early setbacks and disappointments in a new career?

Who would support me on my journey?

There’s a reason I’m asking. Several weeks ago two extraordinary stories caught my eye. The first came via London’s Royal Opera House press office. One of their soloists, Tomas Mock, a Slovakian dancer who trained with the Royal Ballet School and entered the company graduating rising quickly from corps de ballet to principal dancer, was leaving the Royal Ballet. He gave his final performance just before Christmas. Despite a flourishing career, he quit ballet and is now full time at LSE (The London School of Economics) studying for his MSc.

The news went viral. Tomas after all is no ageing artist retraining for another career because the going got tough. Still in his early 30s, he’s in his prime. But why finance? The contrast between that world and dance could hardly be more dramatic.

I then discovered that although he’s a top ranking ballet dancer, Tomas was also an A* maths student. Ballet and maths jostled for his affections: eventually maths won. While still performing with the Royal Ballet in 2022 he received his BSc from the Open University. I was impressed at how his LinkedIn profile reflects commitment to the world of finance. “I am deeply passionate about the intricacies of financial markets and investing. My academic journey has further ignited my enthusiasm for data analysis…as I delve deeper into the world of statistics and finance I am eager to apply my knowledge, collaborate with like minded professionals and contribute to innovative projects.”

Amazingly, several weeks later, I heard that 17 year-old Anglo-Chinese solo violinist Leia Zhu had been awarded a top diploma from London’s prestigious Institute of Banking and Finance. This qualifies her to practise as a bona fide financial advisor when she reaches the age of 18. With overseas concerts and tours lined up for 2024 Leia has no immediate plans to abandon music, although she intends to become a personal advisor, perhaps in tandem with her music, helping clients with financial management and investments.

Like Tomas Mock, her passion for finance is unmistakable. “Since childhood I’ve been captivated by the intricacies of finance, mirroring the complex melodies in music. The pandemic struck a dissonant note in my life. It led me to ponder how one can navigate financial uncertainties, especially in the artistic domain where income is often irregular. This curiosity led me on a journey of discovery.”

Mature beyond her years, Leia credits music with instilling discipline, mental clarity, time management, also cultivating rapport and communication – all essential in making sound financial decisions. “My goal is to make financial literacy accessible and engaging, helping demystify these concepts. I hope to empower others with the knowledge they need to make informed financial decisions…people who might not initially be interested in learning the seemingly boring principles of finance.”

Should we dismiss Tomas and Leia as post-pandemic one-night wonders? Probably not.

As the aftermath of Covid continues to reshape the workplace, prompting skilled and professional workers to quit their jobs or switch careers, Tomas and Leia’s stories may be exceptional – but they are far from unique. Inspired by their individual journeys and in preparation for the publication of a memoir charting my own early radical career change, I’ve become fascinated as well as encouraged by other people’s tales of reinvention. Far from being hard to find, I’ve made astonishing discoveries about people’s courage and determination to bring more meaning and fulfilment to their working lives.

I’ll share these inspiring stories over the coming weeks….

New book coming soon in 2024 . . .

Emilie Flöge was a feminist, a fashion designer and, in 19th-century Vienna, a woman ahead of her time.  She was also the lover and muse of the artist Gustav Klimt.  But could a scruffy picture picked up online for €150 really be a long-lost portrait of her?

Read the article “Of Truth and Beauty”

The death several weeks ago of 81 year-old Cornelius Gurlitt in Munich, has thrown up further questions over the fate of his recently uncovered “Nazi-looted” art collection. When it emerged last November that thousands of paintings and artworks originally acquired by his late father, a prominent pro-Nazi art dealer, had been impounded by the German authorities during an investigation into alleged tax evasion by Gurlitt, the art world went into shock. Many of the paintings and drawings, including masterpieces by Cezanne, Picasso, Max Beckmann, Matisse and van Gogh, were suspected of having been stolen by the Nazis from their original Jewish owners. Restitution experts specialising in the provenance of works bought or otherwise acquired during the Second World War, demanded a full itinerary of works held by the authorities. That disclosure has been slow, reluctant and selective: the full extent of the cache is still not clear, and in the meanwhile, Gurlitt was found to have amassed further very valuable art collections at his homes in Salzburg and Bad Aussee in Austria.

In the wake of these revelations, Gurlitt declared that these collections were his property, having been left to him by his father who, he claimed, had rightfully and legally acquired them. A special Task Force composed of historians and art experts was set up to examine the provenance of many of the works, and to consider new claims from Holocaust survivors and their families who originally owned the paintings who were beginning to come forward.The Task Force recently agreed to return any paintings not identified as stolen, and declared that their investigation would be completed by spring 2015. Some works had in fact been returned to Gurlitt earlier this year, declared free from suspicion by the German prosecutor. But, mysteriously, the two collections in Austria were removed by Gurlitt’s lawyer for safekeeping: even more puzzling is the fact that none of those works was seized, and nor have they been included in the current investigation ordered by the German prosecutor. The status of those collections remains a mystery.

With Gurlitt’s sudden death, the saga becomes even more bizarre. A few weeks ago, Gurlitt drew up a new will, in which he named the Kunstmuseum in Berne, Switzerland, as his sole heir – thereby bequeathing them his entire art collection. According to the museum, the news “came like a bolt from the blue, since at no time has Mr Gurlitt had any connection with the Kunstmuseum”. In a public statement, the museum, no doubt sensing a poisoned chalice, further said: “The Kunstmuseum…..do not wish to conceal the fact that this magnificent bequest brings with it a considerable burden of responsibility and a wealth of questions of the most difficult and sensitive kind and….of a legal and ethical nature”.

So, what will become of any art works decreed by the German Task Force to have been looted, or of the rest of the collection – including the two multi-million caches found in Austria – is anyone’s guess. In a final twist, last week a cousin of Cornelius Gurlitt, Ekkehart Gurlitt, a photographer living in Barcelona, stated he will challenge the validity of Gurlitt’s will. His claim is that Cornelius Gurlitt was old, infirm, confused by the glare of publicity and ongoing controversy over his collection, therefore may not have been in his right mind when he changed his will. Ekkehart Gurlitt may be right. Or he may have an eye on the main chance. Only time will tell. Until then, the art world continues to hold its breath.

Last week’s sentencing of serial killer Joanna Dennehy, for the murder of three men and attempted murder of two others, reminded me of the extreme dangerousness of psychopaths such as Dennehy, and why a life prison sentence is the only appropriate punishment. In the US, 19 year-old Miranda Barbour has confessed killing at least 22 men whom she met for sex through a Craigslist website. Predictably,the press has been awash with articles attempting to understand such crimes, agonising over how such horrors could ever have been carried out by a woman.

Sadly, I don’t see these cases as inexplicable or unique. While researching my book on female violence and aggression, Deadlier Than the Male, in the 1990s, I interviewed one of the UK’s leading forensic psychiatrists, Dr Jeremy Coid. He left me in no doubt as to the horrifically complex and mostly incurable behaviour of women who get their thrills from torturing and killing. Dennehy’s and Barbour’s lack of remorse and self-confessed enjoyment of the act of murder are all of a piece with Coid’s definitions of what lies behind such actions.

Coid, who has interviewed almost 100 women in maximum security hospitals including Broadmoor and Rampton, discovered that many derived extreme sexual arousal from thinking about acts of torture and killing, planning those attacks and then carrying them out. A large erotic aspect of such behaviour is fantasy – as it is with many male serial killers. In these women’s fantasies, whether they imagine themselves killing men or women, they invariably imagine themselves as the dominant sexual partner. Their sexual fantasies, as well as their behaviour in everyday life, is invariably highly aggressive, predatory and promiscuous and involves victims, male or female, who are essentially submissive and unassertive. The women he talked to confessed to being turned on by sex games, real or imaginary, which included sado-masochism, physical violence and rape – with an appropriate weapon. According to Jeremy Coid, the women he interviewed described the peak of their sexual fantasies as the murder of their partner during orgasm. Such masturbatory rituals became increasingly elaborate, well rehearsed, and repetitive.The women reported that desire for a penis to be able to “rape like a man” was part of the excitement of violence. Like male serial killers, the women became addicted to violence and sadism, sometimes from their early teens on.

Just as disturbing were some women’s lifelong obsession with decapitation, arson, knives, and other instruments of death. In very extreme cases, they fantasised about raping and killing old or disabled people, animals, even children. We may think such fantasies, albeit revolting, are in themselves harmless, as long as they always remain fantasies. But they don’t. The pattern of acting out imaginary scenarios seems no different for violent psychopathic women than it is for male serial murderers, whose diaries, videos, drawings, and stories of sado-masochism offer as much insight into their hideous inner landscape as the crimes themselves.

So it is for violent women. The more sexually arousing a woman’s sexual fantasy, and the greater the fulfilment derived from imagined acts of sadism, domination and murder, the more frequently she is likely to indulge those fantasies, until the ultimate gratification: planning and carrying them out for real. Some Women convicted of crimes of sadism and violence admitted to Jeremy Coid that they may not have always experienced sexual thrills while planning and committing those acts, but that the accompanying adrenalin rush and subsequent exhaustion following an attack was the only way they could relieve the persistent tension and anger that had troubled them all their lives. The discovery that women may act violently to dispel their almost unbearably stressful feelings is one of the keys to understanding why women kill – and enjoy it. The chilling truth is that this is very similar, if not identical, to men who kill.

That’s what makes the fate, like the actions, of Joanna Dennehy and Miranda Barbour so tragic.

A huge row brewing in Vienna over a Gustav Klimt masterpiece has been largely overlooked by the press, which remains preoccupied with Cornelius Gurlitt’s secret stashes of over 1500 allegedly Nazi-looted artworks in Munich and Salzburg. The other story concerns Klimt’s monumental, 7×111 foot Beethoven Frieze, an elaborate gilded Jugendstil fantasy celebrating the composer’s Ninth Symphony. Klimt painted it in 1902 for the historic opening of Vienna’s new gallery devoted to the breakaway Seccession Movement, founded by Klimt with other radical artists.The famous landmark is also known as the “cabbage” building because of the elaborate curlicued golden decoration on its roof. Intended only for temporary exhibition, the frieze remained on the walls throughout a major 1903 retrospective exhibition of Klimt’s work. That same year it was bought by an important Viennese collector, Carl Reininghaus, who had the frieze removed from the walls in eight separate sections which he then left in storage for a dozen years in a furniture depository. In 1915, Reininghaus sold the work to August Lederer, one of Klimt’s foremost supporters and patrons. But, with the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, Lederer was forced to escape to Switzerland, leaving behind his home and art collection which was appropriated by the Nazis.

After the end of the war, some of the Lederer family’s looted art works were returned to August Lederer’s son Erich, but, like many Jewish families whose possessions were plundered by the Germans, the family had to fight long and hard to for permission to take these back to the countries where they had fled at outbreak of war. Usually, this resulted in further victimisation of these dispossessed families, who, after protracted haggling, were coerced into signing special “deals” to regain some of their belongings. Because of Austria’s strict laws at the time, prohibiting the export of works of historic and cultural value, the Lederers were forced to donate, or to sell at knockdown prices, their most valuable paintings to the Austrian state, in return for being allowed to take other works to Switzerland. This was nothing less than extortion by the Austrian authorities. Although Erich Lederer waited for many years to be allowed to take his beloved Beethoven Frieze home to Switzerland, in 1973 he capitulated to Austria’s demands, and sold the iconic work to the state at a cut price rate of $750.000. At the time, this was acknowledged to be less than half the value of the work, estimated by Christie’s at $2 million. The frieze, by then badly damaged, was restored and eventually installed in a specially designed room at the Sccession Museum. There, just as Klimt’s iconic “The Kiss” in another Viennese gallery, this masterwork continues to attract visitors and art lovers from around the world.

That might have been the end of the matter until, last September, heirs of the Lederer family dropped a bombshell by filing a legal claim for the return of the work.The demand is by far the most high profile case to emerge since a new restitution law was passed in Austria in 2009. This allows Nazi-looted art, as well as art previously sold by former owners under duress or at a great discount because of the country’s export ban, to be returned to the claimants. According to legal experts, the Beethoven Frieze is a textbook case for this new restitution law. Under the terms of the 2009 law, all Austria’s museums and public collections must allow investigations into the origins and provenance of all their artworks for evidence of forced sales and disposal of other people’s property on a nod and a wink by dealers who were Nazi sympathisers and collaborators. A special Restitution Commission, responsible for supervising these probes, meets five or six times a year and publishes its recommendations online. The commission will now look into the Lederer family’s claim and then submit its findings to a restitution advisory panel in Vienna, who are likely to decide on the case later this year. The panel will then make a recommendation to Austria’s culture minister, who is responsible for the final decision.

In the meantime, The Seccession Museum, which houses the masterpiece, is defending itself against the claim, arguing there is written evidence that Erich Lederer sold the Beethoven Frieze to the Austrian state in an amicable transaction, claiming that he sold the frieze for a price “voluntarily negotiated by him and considered by him to be reasonable.” Lawyers for Lederer’s Swiss heirs emphasise that correspondence owned by the museum and now cited as evidence for an amicable negotiation proves nothing, and that such arguments are self-serving and “truly cynical”. But, as the art world eagerly awaits the verdict in this wrangle, another burning question remains: Christie’s valued the Beethoven Frieze at $2 million in 1973. Given the record breaking multiple millions that Gustav Klimt’s paintings now command on the open market, what is its estimated 2014 value ? The fight has only begun, and the sums involved remain anyone’s guess.

In Germany, where so far no such restitution law exists, heritage experts and art dealers are watching this case with keen interest. The German authorities have come under fire for their indifference towards last November’s disclosure, by a popular magazine, of 81 year-old Cornelius Gurlitt’s secret cache of over 1500 art works in a Munich flat. Many hundreds of the works are suspected of being Nazi-looted treasures. Until now, no complete list of the hidden canvases, which customs officials have kept under lock and key for two years, has been released. In response to outrage from Jewish organisations as well as the governments of Israel, the UK and the USA, the new culture minister Monika Grutters, recently proposed the establishment of an independent centralised body to deal with restitution and provenance issues. And last week, the German government announced it was considering a law, proposed by the justice minister, permitting families to recover works of art stolen from them during the war or else acquired from them under duress. The main feature of the new law would be the removal of the 30 year statute of limitations, which has prevented anyone claiming their possessions since 1975. Given that most of the original owners of Nazi-looted art works were either murdered in German death camps or have died of old age, it all seems too little, too grudging, too late. Had the scandal of Cornelius Gurlitt’s secret treasure trove not focused international attention on Germany’s shameful indifference to matters of restitution, would the government ever have decided to do the right thing ?

I’m sure I cannot be the only person to notice one of the more disturbing aspects of the Meredith Kercher murder case. That is, how many observers around the world, most of them wholly unconnected with these events, have joined forces to vilify Amanda Knox, her alleged killer, as a ruthless, degenerate liar undeserving of sympathy or understanding. Equally chilling is the Knox haters’ readiness to excoriate anyone who doubts or questions Knox’s role in Kercher’s murder. Those attacks, naturally enough, have been carried out anonymously, almost wholly online, through social media. It is clear when you read several long established blogs, forums and twitter feeds dedicated to the memory of Meredith Kercher, that anyone outside the anti-Knox camp, is regarded as an enemy of truth and justice and ipso facto also condemned to eternal hell and damnation. Anyone who rightly claims that Knox’s and Sollecito’s role in the murder has so far not been proven without reasonable doubt, has been come in for often vicious abuse and charged with belonging to a conspiracy to cover up the truth of Knox’s guilt.

One such alleged “conspirator” , the American crime author Douglas Preston, is a prime example of character assassination by the world’s Knox-haters. Preston’s treachery, according to his enemies, is to have given an interview to the website of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in which he said he thought Amanda Knox was innocent. His other crime was to have written a true account of his own investigations with a fellow Italian journalist, Mario Spezi, into a series of grisly murders allegedly committed by the so-called “Monster of Florence” during the 1970s and 1980s. The identity of the monster has never been proven. The reason for the Knox-haters’ attacks on Preston and Spezi, both of whom I have interviewed in the past, long before the Kercher murder, is that both men became involved with the Chief Prosecutor of Perugia, Giuliano Mignini, who eventually headed the investigation into Kercher’s murder. In previous years, Mignini had been involved in probing the Monster of Florence murders: in their book, The Monster of Florence, both authors cast doubt on the soundness of Mignini’s investigation, especially his theory that the killings were part of Satanic rituals carried out by high-ranking members of a local cult. Mignini ordered the arrest of Preston and Spezi and both men were charged with attempting to derail his investigation. Preston was arrested in Florence and hauled up for interrogation by Mignini. Although charged with various offences, he avoided imprisonment and returned to the US. Spezi wasn’t so lucky. After lengthy interrogation, he was imprisoned in Perugia’s grim Capanne jail for over three weeks before Mignini bowed to worldwide public pressure and released him, but not before he was charged with numbers of crimes including the allegation that he was the Monster of Florence. While Spezi was soon cleared of all charges, ironically, Mignini was himself subsequently charged and convicted of abusing his judicial powers. None of this has prevented Knox haters from praising Mignini’s investigation into Kercher’s murder or continuing to accuse Spezi and Preston and anyone connected with them, of being criminals.

If nothing else, Preston’s and Spezi’s run in with Mignini and the later investigation of Meredith Kercher’s murder illustrate three important aspects of Italian culture and its justice system. First is the extent to which superstition, primitive belief in the powers of good and evil and the presence of occult forces still lingers in parts of Italy, including the areas around Florence and Perugia. Another cultural quirk is the enduring and widespread Latin view of all women as either madonnas or whores – the latter being the category to which Amanda Knox was immediately consigned by many Italians, including Giuliano Mignini. As in the Monster case, he railed against the forces of darkness and claimed Meredith Kercher was a victim of a drug-fuelled, sado-masochistic sex ritual that went wrong.

The third disturbing feature to emerge from the Monster of Florence case and that of Kercher’s murder is the degree to which police procedure in Italy – and also to some extent in France, Spain, Greece, Portugal – is often fatally flawed from the very outset of a criminal investigation. Common slip ups include contamination or loss of vital evidence, slow and sloppy police procedure, failure to promptly and fully seal off the crime scene and flawed forensic work. Given the questionable validity of scientific evidence presented by the prosecution in some murder cases, it would be astonishing if this did not result in unsafe convictions.

In fact, many believe Kercher’s killer is already behind bars. Rudy Guede, originally from the Ivory Coast, was soon discovered to have been at the scene of Kercher’s murder. Guede went on the run immediately after her body was discovered.Eventually arrested in Germany, he was brought to trial and convicted of the murder on the basis of DNA evidence, including semen traces, linking him to the murder scene. Although Guede confessed having been present, his claim – supported by thousands of Knox-haters – that he did not act alone and that he was joined by Knox and Sollecito in the attack on Kercher, remains unproven. Several footprints and DNA traces remain unidentified: might it not be that others did join Guede during his murderous binge, but that they remain as yet unidentified ?