Ahead of Time

Elsie Slonim born in 1917 in the United States of a Hungarian father and a Bosnian mother. She was the younger of two daughters, and considers herself a relic of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She spent her childhood in Baden by Vienna, and had to leave Austria when the Nazis invaded. She married twice. Her second husband was a Russian Jewish agronomist, whose family had come as pioneers from Siberia to Palestine - now Israel - in 1908. She and her husband lived in Cyprus where he ran an exemplary citrus plantation which he began in the early 1930s. They had a son and a daughter. Elsie now lives alone with her beloved dachshund, Schatzi, in the family home in north Nicosia, situated in a Turkish military zone between north and south Cyprus.

Leonie Brittain was educated at a theatre and ballet school, and graduated in Fine Art as a mature student. She has worked largely in academic organisations, and her final job before relocating to Northern Cyprus in 2000 was at the medical research charity, The Wellcome Trust. During her time in Cyprus, she has been working as a freelance editor, editing newspaper and magazine articles, academic papers and books.