Some autobiographies manage to have just the right title, and this is one of them. It is not surprising that as the only child of two titanic figures, born late in life after they had all but given up hope of ever having children, John Julius Cooper (Viscount Norwich is the title he inherited from his father) seems from his very cradle to have cultivated trying to please.
The life span of the celebrated portrait painter Philip de Laszlo, who was born Fulop Laub in Budapest in 1869 and died in London in 1937, coincided with the final flowering of the last great royal and imperial courts of Europe. Despite a humble background as the son of a Jewish tailor, de Laszlo's formidable artistic talent, his drive to succeed and an equally strong ability to reinvent himself all combined to get him ennobled by Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef.
