There are now fewer and fewer voices who can tell us about their childhoods in the 1940s and 1950s. Helmut Birkhan, long-serving medieval historian at the University of Vienna, experienced author and fluent storyteller, takes us on a journey back in time to this fading world in the heart of Austria. Childhood in Vienna is more than just a memoir; it is a vivid portrait of our grandparents’ world that is both informed and imaginative, and which does not succumb to either nostalgia or idealisation. Birkhan dusts off old words and phrases, and brings forgotten figures back to life.