Philipp Blom is a historian, novelist, journalist and translator. He was born in Hamburg, Germany, grew up in Detmold, and studied in Vienna and Oxford. He holds a DPhil in Modern History from Oxford University. After living and working in London, Paris and Vienna he now lives in Los Angeles with his wife Veronica Buckley. His historical works include To Have and To Hold, a history of collectors and collecting, and Encyclop�die, a history of the Encyclopaedia by Diderot and d'Alembert that sparked the Enlightenment in France. The Vertigo Years, a cultural history of the era 1900 to 1914 in Europe and the United States was recently published in London. Blom has published two novels: The Simmons Papers and Luxor. He has also published an authoritative guide to Austrian wines, The Wines of Austria, and an English translation of Geert Mak's Amsterdam. As a journalist, Blom has written for the Times Literary Supplement, The Financial Times, The Independent, The Guardian, and the Sunday Telegraph in Britain, for various German-language publications, and for Vrij Nederland in the Netherlands, as well as for other magazines and journals, the BBC, and German radio stations. 

Hamburg (Age 54)