The Tennis Champion Who Escaped the Nazis

Frome author tells the harrowing story of her family who survived to play at Wimbledon

Frome author Felice Hardy is launching her new book, The Tennis Champion Who Escaped the Nazis, at the Frome Festival.

The book has attracted wide attention, and is being featured in two events in Frome next month, and Felice will be interviewed on BBC Breakfast on the first day of this year’s Wimbledon Championships, on 3rd July.

Felice’s story, which she uncovered by chance, tells of her grandparents’ escape, along with her mother who was a child at the time, to London from Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1939.

Felice’s grandmother, Liesl Herbst, was the Austrian national tennis champion, and the book is the moving story of their escape – and of what happened to those left behind.

Liesl and her husband David and their daughter Dorli – Felice’s mother – fled to Britain. The family had already been stripped of their Austrian citizenship and rendered stateless aliens but despite this, both Liesl and Dorli competed at Wimbledon. They remain the only mother and daughter ever to have played doubles together at the championships. Felice’s grandmother actually beat Tim Henman’s grandmother to qualify for Wimbledon.

The moving story of escape and survival also explores the terrible fate of the family they left behind who died in the Holocaust. Woven throughout is the author’s search for her own identity.

As part of this year’s Frome Festival, Felice will be holding a talk and reading at the Archangel on King Street on Thursday 13th July at 7.30pm. Tickets are free but need to be booked at https://fromefestival.co.uk/event/felice-hardy-book-launch/. She will also be signing her book at Hunting Raven Books in Cheap Street, Frome, on Saturday 15th July from 11am to 2pm.

Felice is a local travel writer whose work has appeared in most national newspapers and numerous lifestyle magazines over the years. She has also co-written 18 travel guide books, together with her husband Peter. The Tennis Champion Who Escaped the Nazis is her first non-travel book.

Felice says that she was inspired to write the book after her daughter wanted to find out more about their family history. She explained, “My daughter asked if we could go to Vienna to try and find out more about our family’s heritage as we had very little information, so my three children and I set off for answers.

“I first booked a walking tour of the city and the tour guide mentioned that her hobby is to reconnect people with their heritage if they had family that came from Vienna – which was just perfect for us! The guide very kindly went through the local archives and it was amazing to uncover this part of my family’s history that we had no idea about – my grandparents had died some years ago and so had my mother, so there was no-one to ask for more information.

“I managed to get some more information from some of my mother’s cousins and following this, I took a trip to the Czech Republic, where my grandmother was born and also to Slovakia, where my grandfather was born, to try and connect the dots.”

The Mail on Sunday has described the book as, “Fabulous story guaranteed to capture people’s imagination” while Peter James, international bestselling crime writer says, “Stunningly descriptive, compelling writing, I was moved close to tears on several occasions”.

Read more about the author on her blog www.felicehardy.com The book is published by Ad Lib.

Pictured: Felice with her book credit Mike Lang.