The Darkrooms of Edith Tudor Hart : Stories of a Life

Writer and journalist Peter Stephan Jungk tells the story of Edith Tudor-Hart, his great-aunt, informed by lived experience and years of research into her mysterious and enigmatic life and career. With The Darkrooms of Edith Tudor-Hart he paints a vivid portrait of one of the most important Austrian–British photographers of the twentieth century.

Why did you get yourself into this, Edith? Was it all worth it? Born and raised in a liberal Jewish family in Vienna, Edith Tudor-Hart’s legacy is defined by her pioneering social photography and her pivotal role in the recruitment of Kim Philby as a Soviet agent. Arrested for her involvement with socialist groups, Edith emigrated to England in 1933 to escape political and religious persecution. There, her photography came to reflect her socialist ideals, and her clandestine work for the Soviet Union meant she would spend the rest of her life under the suspicion and close surveillance of MI5. The Darkrooms of Edith Tudor-Hart is the culmination of Peter Stephan Jungk’s enduring fascination with his cousin’s life. His vivid portrait reveals a woman whose life was shrouded in secrecy and whom – in his confession to MI5 a decade before Edith’s death – the Soviet spy Anthony Blunt called ‘the grandmother of us all.’