For more than three decades Jonathan Carr (1942-2008) served as a foreign correspondent, initially in Geneva, Paris and Brussels, later as bureau chief of the Financial Times and the Economist in Germany. A regular visitor to the Bayreuth festival, his interest grew steadily in the saga of the Wagner family – above all as a mirror of German (and in part European) history. His many books include an acclaimed biography of Gustav Mahler (1993) . The winner of several press awards for his reporting from Germany, he received the CBE in 2000 for services to British-German relations.