Platform 4

A bar in the Rue de Tournon, Paris. It’s 2 am – closing time – but two tired street performers persuade a tired landlady to give them one ‘last’ drink and to hear their story… the legend of the Holy Drinker, the story of Andreas, who lives under one of the many bridges that cross the Seine…

Joseph Roth is a long neglected figure in European literature, a writer and journalist best known for his family saga Radetzky March about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; his novel of Jewish life in 1920s Europe, Job, and his essay, Juden auf Wanderschaft¸ translated into English as The Wandering Jews.

Having spent his later life exiled in Paris, he died shortly before the outbreak of the second world war. Despite remaining a prolific writer, his novels and short stories full of charm, beauty, magic and elegance, his final years were marred by alcoholism. His final novella, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, is believed by many to be semi-autobiographical, chronicling a vagrant’s attempts to regain his dignity and repay a debt.