He’s one of the finest writers of children’s literature in Ireland today and with In the Claws of the Eagle Aubrey Flegg has produced a fitting end to an unforgettable trilogy about love, about art, about music and about history.
Adults will enjoy this trilogy, of which this is the third as much as 12 year olds and teenagers. The Rainbow Bridge is the second and Wings over Delft is the first one. Wings over Delft begins in mid 17th century Holland, The Rainbow Bridge takes us onwards through the 18th century and the French Revolution and finally this unforgettable trilogy comes to its conclusion with In the Claws of the Eagle in Austria in the early 20th century and then onwards to the Nazis and their acquisition of a massive art collection. Click here to see the whole trilogy.
The year is 1913. The portrait of Louise is hanging in the home of a Jewish family, the Abrahams, in Vienna. After the Anschluss of 1939, Izaac is sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and then to Auschwitz. The portrait falls into the hands of Erich Hoffman, and seems to join the art collection being amassed on the orders of Adolf Hitler.
Aubrey Flegg was born in Dublin. His early childhood was spent in County Sligo, Ireland. He went to school in Dublin and later in England. After a spell with a mountain rescue team in Scotland, he returned to Ireland to study geology at Trinity College. He then did geological research in Kenya, before joining the Geological Survey of Ireland in 1968. Aubrey recently took early retirement in order to concentrate on writing.
His first book, Katie's War, is about the civil war period in Ireland; it was published in 1997. Katie's War has recently won the Peter Pan Award 2000 -- an award created by IBBY Sweden for a children's book, translated into Swedish, which gives information on another culture.
Wings Over Delft, the first book in the Louise trilogy, won the Bisto Book of the Year overall award in 2004.
