Anthony Rudolf, Office Hours in the Studio of Paula Rego

£30.00

Written while Paula Rego was alive and with her blessing, Office Hours in the Studio of Paula Rego is a moving meditation on the romantic and creative relationship between a writer and one of the greatest painters of our time.

Anthony Rudolf and Paula Rego met in 1996 and remained together for the rest of her life. Throughout those years he was also her main male model. In this book Rudolf gives a vivid account of the life they shared and what it was like to inhabit the looking-glass world of Rego’s studio. Filled with ‘dollies’ and other extraordinary props, ’the studio,’ he writes, ‘is where Paula has no inhibitions’; and nor could he, if he was to participate in the carnival of her imagination.

Here, for the first time, Rudolf, who was a willing accomplice and loving observer in that realm, publishes initial impressions from his diaries and later recollections to reflect on what happened when the studio door closed and she turned to her work.

Publication 13 October 2026

Written while Paula Rego was alive and with her blessing, Office Hours in the Studio of Paula Rego is a moving meditation on the romantic and creative relationship between a writer and one of the greatest painters of our time.

Anthony Rudolf and Paula Rego met in 1996 and remained together for the rest of her life. Throughout those years he was also her main male model. In this book Rudolf gives a vivid account of the life they shared and what it was like to inhabit the looking-glass world of Rego’s studio. Filled with ‘dollies’ and other extraordinary props, ’the studio,’ he writes, ‘is where Paula has no inhibitions’; and nor could he, if he was to participate in the carnival of her imagination.

Here, for the first time, Rudolf, who was a willing accomplice and loving observer in that realm, publishes initial impressions from his diaries and later recollections to reflect on what happened when the studio door closed and she turned to her work.

Publication 13 October 2026

About the Author

Born in London in 1942, Anthony Rudolf is a writer, poet and translator. He wrote the first extended study in English of Primo Levi and, in any language, of another Auschwitz survivor, the French novelist Piotr Rawicz.

Office Hours in the Studio of Paula Rego is the fifth and final volume of his thematic memoirs: Arithmetic of Memory: A Childhood Kingdom (1998), A Vanished Hand: My Autograph Album (2013), Silent Conversations: A Reader’s Life (2017) and Journey Around My Flat (2021). European Hours: Collected Poems, an anthology of his poetry, was published in 2017 and has been translated into 10 languages.

As a literary essayist, Rudolf has ranged widely: from Balzac and Byron to F.T. Prince, George Oppen and Borges. He has edited various anthologies and his reviews, articles, poems, translations, obituaries and interviews with writers have appeared in numerous journals. He is an occasional broadcaster on radio and television. He was Visiting Lecturer in Arts and Humanities at London Metropolitan University and Royal Literary Fund fellow at the Universities of Hertfordshire and Westminster. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has contributed to BBC TV, Radio Three, Radio Four and – in English, French and Russian – the BBC World Service.