Florence

“Florence: Ordeal by Water was absolutely indispensable during my research for Still Life. Here, finally, was a vivid eye-witness account of the 1966 flood that devastated Florence. Utterly compelling.”
- Sarah Winman, international bestselling author of Still Life

To showcase this wonderful book, we commissioned the writer and art historian Vanessa Nicolson to pen a new introduction – she lives in both Florence and Kent, and is the author of the brilliant novel Angels of Mud, which is set in 1940s London and 1960s Florence, and tells the story of the aftermath of the floods. 

Kathrine Kressmann Taylor was a recently retired American living in Florence in 1966. She remained there to witness the flood and its aftermath, including the days of isolation without light, food, water that followed the initial disaster.

Standing, incredulous, at the window of her pensione on the morning of 4th November 1966, Kathrine saw the the brown torrent of the river Arno – thick with flotsam, oil drums, cars, chairs, trees – rising into the streets. Her infinitely moving diary of the days of the flood, and those that followed, detail how the citizens of Florence strove against the choking sea of mud that engulfed their homes, possessions, shops and art.

The author is perhaps most well-known for her 1938 novella - the international bestseller Address Unknown - a haunting tale written on the eve of the Holocaust which predicted the full horrors of Nazism.

Her trademark succinct yet vivid style is evident in this powerful Florence diary too. The book is an intensely personal account through which we can visualise the thickness of the torrent streaked with chrome yellow; the elderly scholars saving works of art; a great swan, coated with black fuel oil, flailing for life; a woman singing as she attacks devastation with a bucket and a rag; the mudheaps spangled with splinters of red, gold and silver Christmas tree ornament; and the men and women searching through debris for belongings accumulated over many generations.

“There will be many accounts of Florence’s Ordeal in November 1966. but Ms Kressmann Taylor’s will surely be the most vivid and moving.”