Catherine Ostler for The Renoir Girls

Castherine Ostler joins us to celebrate The Renoir Girls - an astonishing true story of splendour, scandal and tragedy in Golden Age Paris. Hot off the heels of The Duchess Countess, Ostler's latest has been selected by The Times as a one to look out for in 2026. It should make for a fascinating evening.

In 1881, Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted two young sisters from a Jewish banking dynasty at their home in Paris's grand 8th arrondissement. Pink and Blue, a portrait of Elisabeth and Alice Cahen d'Anvers, captures a fleeting moment of innocence and beauty, and today it is one of Renoir's most celebrated works. His portrait evokes the glamour of the Belle Epoque: days at the races, nights at the opera, sun-soaked chateaux, brilliant salons filled with art, music and conversation. Paris at its most dazzling.

Yet beneath the glittering surface was a surging current of resentment. Renoir's Impressionist masterpiece, radiant with light and colour, hides both a family secret and the tensions of an era poised for rupture. The same society that was illuminated by progress and culture was cast into shadow by division, prejudice and rising antisemitism. The Cahen d'Anvers, prominent patrons of this Golden Age, would come to embody both its glory and its tragedy.

In The Renoir Girls, Catherine Ostler paints a vivid and immersive portrait of intimate individual lives against the vast sweep of a changing Europe. Drawing on letters, diaries and exclusive new research, Ostler uncovers revelatory truths about a family at the heart of modern Europe's struggles. From the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War to the Dreyfus Affair and the devastation of two world wars, this is a powerful story of love, courage and identity in conflict with the forces of history.

Catherine Ostler is an author and journalist who has been Editor-in-Chief of Tatler, the Evening Standard's ES magazine and Editor of The Times Weekend. She has also written for a wide range of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Telegraph, the Financial Times and Vogue. She read English at Oxford University and is a co-founder of Cliveden Literary Festival. Her first book was the critically acclaimed The Duchess Countess (2021).