The House at Number 48: 10. The Last Eisner

Summary

The History Podcast — "The House at Number 48: 10. The Last Eisner"
BBC Radio 4 | Release Date: October 24, 2025

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Overview

In the moving final episode of "The House at Number 48" series, host Charlie Northcote follows Antony Easton as he completes a decade-long quest to uncover his family’s hidden history. After his father’s death reveals a suitcase of cryptic clues, Antony tracks stolen family assets, confronts layers of identity, and—at last—secures the restitution of a treasured painting lost during the Holocaust. As artifacts and documentation emerge, so do new understandings of legacy, trauma, and renewal within the Easton (Eisner) family.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Confrontation at the Brohan Museum ([01:09]–[03:44])

• Antony and Jana’s Meeting: Antony visits Berlin, determined to reclaim a family painting, “Eisenwasswerk,” confiscated by the Nazis and now displayed in the Brohan Museum. Armed with a vital document from 1938 marked with a swastika, Antony and his researcher, Jana, attend a tense boardroom meeting with museum officials.
  • “It was a February day…we were sitting on this dynamite piece of information that they knew nothing about.” — Anthony Easton ([01:09])
• Revelatory Evidence: Jana presents the critical sales document.
  • “Four or five jaws were dropping to the floor. The stenographer had stopped typing.” — Anthony Easton ([02:53])
• Outcome: After initial shock, the museum promises restitution of the painting to Antony’s family—over 60 years after its loss.
  • “That was a good moment in my life…we realized that the whole meeting had changed its course.” — Anthony Easton ([03:24])

Restitution and Family Reunification ([03:44]–[06:57])

• Art and Heirlooms Returned: Alongside news of the painting’s return, Antony also receives his grandmother’s cookbook. He presents it as a surprise to his niece, Celia.
  • “Hilgard’s recipe book.” — Anthony Easton ([05:14])
  • Celia reacts emotionally to the family artifact rediscovered after so many years.
• Changing Perceptions of Family: Memories of Antony and Nicola’s secretive, irritable father are re-framed in light of his traumatic childhood—surviving Nazi persecution and rebuilding his life in Britain.
  • “He was a kid in Germany and he was an adult in the UK…he suffered…but he didn’t let that stop him. I think that’s really admirable…this is a hug for my dad.” — Anthony Easton ([06:57])

The Eisner Name Endures ([07:47]–[09:27])

• Legacy and Naming: The Eisner name, erased when their father Peter changed his name, is revived when Celia’s grandson receives ‘Eisner’ as a middle name.
  • “She decided to give him his middle name as Eisner…so that this is his legacy…he’s taken on the name Eisner, which we’ve never had.” — Celia ([07:59])
  • “That name will still be around with him and people will say, that’s an interesting middle name. What’s the story there?” — Anthony Easton ([09:28])

A New Generation’s Perspective ([09:45]–[11:49])

• Ripple Effects: Celia, representing a generation further removed, speaks on the transformation in her relationship to her family’s history and her gratitude for Antony’s research.
  • “It’s quite strange to find all this out about someone that you knew but then you didn’t know…I feel kind of sad and also so grateful to Ant for finding all this out.” — Celia ([10:07])
• The Suitcase’s Meaning: Antony reflects on the possible intention behind his father’s cryptic suitcase—a potential time capsule meant to guide the next generation back to their roots.

The Secret Life of Peter Easton ([11:49]–[15:57])

• Unexpected Revelations: Among the documents, Antony uncovers a file labeled “British Intelligence.” After a successful Freedom of Information request, the family learns their father was involved with MI5 and East Africa Command.
  • “He’d become a sergeant in the Intelligence. In the Intelligence.” — Anthony Easton ([13:54])
  • “He was a spy.” — Celia ([14:17])
• Hidden Service and Sealed Records: The family discovers that more details of Peter’s (aka Rudolf Hans Eisner) wartime service remain sealed for up to 115 years, offering tantalizing clues about the years he kept hidden from his children.

Epiphany, Closure, and Continuity ([15:57]–[16:49])

• Antony’s Journey: The real restoration is not of the lost fortune, but of memory, identity, and pride in his family’s resilience—culminating in the return of the painting and deeper empathy among family members.
  • “You made…you pulled it off. How does it feel? Feels time for a beer. That’s a good old English answer for you might want to be a German.” — Antony Easton, with wry humor ([16:33])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “What’s the word? Catatonic. Four or five jaws were dropping to the floor. The stenographer had stopped typing.” — Anthony Easton ([02:53])
• “That was a picture. At that point, I think I probably looked at Jana…and we realized the whole meeting had changed its course.” — Anthony Easton ([03:24])
• “Hilgard’s recipe book…That’s your grandmother’s handwriting.” — Charlie Northcote & Celia ([05:18])
• “But maybe there’s also a positive spin on it…in which it was actually a renewal and a rebirth, in a sense.” — Charlie Northcote ([06:32])
• “That name will still be around with him and people will say, that’s an interesting middle name. What’s the story there? Yeah, maybe that’s all one can do, really, you know.” — Anthony Easton ([09:28])
• “He was a spy.” — Celia ([14:17])
• “I keep going because someone has to hold the line between grieve and revenge.” — Anthony Easton ([18:15])

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Timestamps – Important Segments

• [01:09] — Museum confrontation in Berlin
• [02:53] — Unveiling the swastika-stamped sales document
• [03:44] — News that the painting and cookbook will return
• [05:11] — Discovery of Hildegard's recipe book
• [06:57] — Re-evaluating their father’s trauma and resilience
• [07:59] — Eisner name restored with new generation
• [10:07] — Next generation's reaction to family revelations
• [13:04] — Discovery and opening of British Intelligence files
• [15:30]–[15:57] — National Archives and sealed records
• [16:33] — Resolution and family celebration

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Conclusion

"The Last Eisner" is a poignant close to a journey spanning continents and generations. Antony Easton's dogged search for the truth brings not only lost artworks but living identity back to his family. As family secrets unfold—some of which may never be fully revealed—the episode celebrates remembrance, resilience, and the power of reclaiming one’s story against the sweep of history.

Transcript

[Charlie Northcote]

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[Anthony Easton]

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[Charlie Northcote]

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[Anthony Easton]

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[Charlie Northcote]

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[Anthony Easton]

It was a February day, and we turned up for the meeting and, you know, it was rather stiff occasion. It was a long table in the boardroom, and we were sitting on this dynamite piece of information that they knew nothing about.

[Charlie Northcote]

For over a decade, Anthony Easton has been hunting down his family's fortune, which disappeared under the Nazis. One of their most precious possessions was a famous painting, a landscape of an enormous steel factory called the Eisenwasswerk. It's sitting in the Brohan Museum in Berlin. Antony's traveled there with a document from 1938 stamped with a swastika which proves his relatives were forced to sell their assets. His intention is to show the museum this evidence. If he can prove the painting was lost through Nazi persecution, they'll have to give it back.

[Anthony Easton]

You know, I was pretty tense at this point, so I wasn't really relaxed in my chair. My heart was racing. There was a museum director. He was the boss. He'd brought everybody together. He'd agreed to have the meeting. And they have to be defensive in a sense, in a situation like that.

[Charlie Northcote]

Anthony and his researcher Jana were asked to meet with the most senior members of the museum in a conference room. Once there, the museum's provenance team gave a presentation explaining how they were not sure if the painting was definitely looted. It was in that moment that Anthony revealed the document. So when Jana put the sales document for the house at number 48 on the table with a giant swastika on the front, how did the museum board react?

[Anthony Easton]

I would say they were. What's the word? Catatonic. Four or five jaws were dropping to the floor. The stenographer had stopped typing.

[Charlie Northcote]

After a period of stunned silence, the document with the swastika was passed around the room. The museum then gave their verdict. More than 60 years since it was taken. They promised to return the Eisenhouse work back to Anthony's family.

[Anthony Easton]

This was a kind of rather beautiful moment. That was a good moment in my life. And that room was a. That was a picture. At that point I think I probably looked at Jana and we probably smiled at each other and we realized that the whole meeting had changed its course. There was a lot of empathy for the Eisner story in the room.

[Charlie Northcote]

Anthony's lost painting is on its way home. But there will be one more twist in his family's story. From Radio 4 and the History podcast, this is the house and number 48, I'm Charlie Northcote. Episode 10 the Last Eisner. A date hasn't been set yet, but the Brohan Museum have stated on record that the Eisenbauswerk is going to be restituted to Anthony with this news. And his grandmother's cookbook also returned to him. Anthony gathered his family at his home in London. Among them was his sister Nicola and her daughter Celia.

[Anthony Easton]

We have a little surprise. This is something I wanted to give you because it was given to me.

[Celia]

To me.

[Anthony Easton]

Yeah, I want to give it to you. It was given to me by the daughter of Martin Hartigan.

[Celia]

Well, I hope it's a big wadge of mug.

[Charlie Northcote]

It's a bit fragile.

[Celia]

What is that?

[Anthony Easton]

It's kind of amazing.

[Charlie Northcote]

Really.

[Anthony Easton]

Actually, that's what it is. It is a cookbook. A recipe book.

[Celia]

What? Hildegard? No. April 1916.

[Anthony Easton]

Hildegard's recipe book.

[Celia]

No way.

[Anthony Easton]

Yeah.

[Charlie Northcote]

That's your grandmother's handwriting.

[Celia]

That's your grandmother's writing. Look. Beautiful. Amazing ant.

[Anthony Easton]

Yeah, isn't it?

[Celia]

So did they, did they in a way always expect you to show up one day?

[Anthony Easton]

They probably did, I would think, yeah.

[Celia]

Wow.

[Charlie Northcote]

When this story began, Anthony and Nicola told us how their father was secretive and irritable during their childhood. But knowing what they know now, how their dad experienced the destruction of his parents world, the loss of his home, the murder of friends and family and an escape to England, all before he turned 14 years old. They see their dad differently now. Do you feel proud of who you are family were now?

[Anthony Easton]

Well, I think now, yeah, my whole attitude to it has changed, you know, pretty much completely. It wasn't that I wasn't not proud of them, but I didn't know anything about them.

[Celia]

Exactly. That's the same for me with my feelings towards my family and my family history have changed.

[Charlie Northcote]

It's interesting because when you first spoke to me about your dad, you spoke a lot about how you felt like his new identity as Peter Easton and his kind of burying of his past was a product of loss and grief and not wanting to go there. But maybe there's also a positive spin on it, too, in which it was actually a renewal and a rebirth, in a sense.

[Anthony Easton]

Yeah, 100%. But I didn't realize what trauma he had managed to rise from. He was a kid in Germany and he was an adult in the uk, and some people are forced into certain situations by circumstance. Obviously, emotionally, he suffered from what had happened to him and his family, but he didn't let that stop him. And I think that's really admirable. I'm not sure if I would have coped with it in the same way. And I think part of this is it's a hug for my dad, you know, and I'd love to get him and give him a great big. You know, I really would.

[Charlie Northcote]

The Eisner family name ended when Anthony and Nicholas father Peter, changed his last name after he emigrated to Britain, or so they thought.

[Celia]

Catherine is my grandson, who was born last August. He's eight months old. And my daughter decided to give him his middle name as Eisner. God, I feel really emotional about it already. I can't talk, actually. And I'm so happy that she did that, so that this is his legacy, this is the family. It's just been a journey of discovery. And he is at sort of the end of that journey now. He's taken on the name Eisner, which we've never had. It's a great sort of legacy. Yeah.

[Charlie Northcote]

And you've given your beautiful boy.

[Celia]

Honestly, I hadn't really thought of that name. I know, but we were at the beginning of this whole thing when we decided to do that. All of this was unfolding. And so Eisner was in my head. And Eisner hadn't been on the family tree for a really long time, so we thought, let's put it back on there.

[Anthony Easton]

I thought it was a really beautiful thing. I really did. And because, you know, the Eisner's really. I mean, I'm sure there are. I think we found a few around the world, but really there. Especially our bit of it from Heinrich down, you know, they're gone. You know that as long as Caspian's around.

[Celia]

Yeah.

[Anthony Easton]

That that name will still Be around with him and people will say, that's an interesting middle name. What's the story there? Yeah, maybe that's all one can do, really, you know.

[Charlie Northcote]

For the younger members of Anthony's family, like his niece Celia, his discoveries have created a shift in identity and a new wave of love and empathy for the lives of their grandparents. You're coming to this again. Another generation kind of removed from it all. Yeah. How do you feel about everything you've learned?

[Celia]

I think it's amazing. I think it's extraordinary. I think it's completely surreal because my. My grandfather Peter was quite a quiet, sweet, like, private man who we felt, you know, very fondly towards, but he was very mysterious. And I remember my sister and I just feeling like we really didn't know anything about him. You know, it's quite strange to find all this out about someone that you knew but then you didn't know. So I feel kind of sad and also so grateful to Ant for finding all this out.

[Anthony Easton]

It's an interesting thing that the suitcase. Yeah. Which is what this is all about, really. Why did he do that? Why was that suitcase there? Why was everything parceled off into these little areas of his life? Why did he keep all that stuff? Now, I understand it to a degree, but I think it was a bit like leaving a time capsule. It was so well left, it was so easy to access, that I think maybe part of him thought that there was that route in the future to restore his family's name.

[Charlie Northcote]

There would be one final twist in the story of Anthony's father, Peter. While reading through the notes in his suitcase, we found a piece of paper stamped with the words British Intelligence. We decided to search his name in the National Archives in London and a record popped up, but we were told it was sealed for 100 years. This is one of the archivists, Roger Kershaw.

[Anthony Easton]

So the documents can and will contain information about individuals who worked in the security services. And these people could be identifiable from the file. So there needs to be a procedure where the file is reviewed to see whether or not aspects of the file need to be redacted.

[Charlie Northcote]

I mean, it said British Intelligence on one of his diaries from the war.

[Anthony Easton]

That's right, it did. It did. Actually, on the letter heading, it was stamped British Intelligence, wasn't it?

[Charlie Northcote]

We issued a Freedom of Information request to try and open up the closed files. And after a couple of weeks, the government let us see the document.

[Anthony Easton]

This is Peter Rudolph, Hans Eisner. Let's just have a look what this says.

[Charlie Northcote]

Says at the top, 17, 6, 1947, MI5 report. The document is what's known as an alien file, a record of Anthony's dad's immigration to the UK from Germany. It contains details of his life, his arrival as a refugee, his enrolment in school, his recruitment into the army as a teenager in 1944, and a period working for the British government.

[Anthony Easton]

Okay, so I've got a thick folder here that's at least 3 inches thick, brown buff folder with a Treasury tag holding the pages together.

[Charlie Northcote]

What's all this scribbly stuff on the inside?

[Anthony Easton]

This just seems to be a summary of what we've looked at. Yes, it's the MI MI5 guy. Yeah, he was part of East Africa Command here. Here we go. He'd become a sergeant in the Intelligence. In the Intelligence.

[Charlie Northcote]

That mention there of intelligence would explain why you've got those documents in his suitcase with that stamp on it.

[Celia]

Yeah, Right. He was a spy.

[Charlie Northcote]

I remember when I first suggested it to Anthony, when we saw the stamp military Intelligence on some of your dad's documents, I said, do you think he was a spy? And you kind of scoffed. I did scoff and think your dad was the most unlikely spy you'd ever.

[Anthony Easton]

Thought of, but my dad would be. He could open to bribery. One piece of chocolate very much did it.

[Charlie Northcote]

But he certainly was involved in British intelligence in East Africa. That's something quite interesting to digest as a family about the role he played out there.

[Celia]

We knew he'd gone to East Africa and that he'd been part of something. That meant he was training troops and climbing Kilimanjaro, but that was about it.

[Anthony Easton]

God, he was much more interested than I thought he was, though.

[Celia]

Exactly.

[Charlie Northcote]

We don't know what Peter Easton was doing in East Africa, but his role in the intelligence services may partly explain why he shared so little about his past with his children. There is a second file on him in the archives which could have more detail on exactly what he did for the British government, but those records are.

[Anthony Easton]

Locked away, so he will have a service record and those records are gradually working their way to the National Archives. They're actually closed for 115 years, so I think his record will probably be opened in something like 2063, probably 100.

[Charlie Northcote]

Before Anthony's father died, he filled a suitcase full of clues for his son, a pathway to understanding who he was. Anthony will never recover the fortune that was taken from his family, but he has restored a memory of who they once were, the extraordinary brave people they were. And his grandfather's painting will soon be hanging on his wall.

[Anthony Easton]

So well done, guys.

[Charlie Northcote]

You made you.

[Anthony Easton]

You pulled it off. How does it feel? Feels time for a beer. That's a good old English answer for you might want to be a German.

[Charlie Northcote]

We're finding out we have more in common with J. The house at number 48 was presented and written by me, Charlie Northcote. The series producer is Jim Frank, the production coordinator was Brenda Brown, sound design and mix by Tom Brignall, music by Anna Papadamitriu and special research by Jana Slavova. The editor was Matt Willis, the commissioning executive was Tracey Williams, and the commissioning editor was Dan Clark. And a special thanks to to Cosma Shaw, Wolf, Karla Lydia, Elizabeth Vild, David De Jong, Ann Weber and Matthew Burton. If you enjoyed this series from the History podcast, you might also like another called Half Life, the story of writer Joe Dunthorne discovering the disturbing truth about his grandfather's escape from Nazi Germany. Listen to every series from the History podcast on BBC Sounds. When you look at what's going on around the world, it's easy to think that we humans are incapable of living peacefully. But there are out there people who disagree.

[Anthony Easton]

I keep going because someone has to hold the line between grieve and revenge.

[Charlie Northcote]

I'm Matthew side, and in my sideways miniseries chasing Peace from BBC Radio 4, I'm meeting people who have radical ideas about how we can stop what feels like an inevitable slide into conflict. Listen first on BBC Sounds. Hello, it's Ray Winstone. I'm here to tell you about my podcast on BBC Radio 4, History's Toughest Heroes. I've got stories about the pioneers, the rebels, the outcasts who define tough. And that was the first time that anybody ever ran a car up that fast with no tires on. It almost feels like your eyeballs are going to come out of your head. Tough enough for you? Subscribe to History's Toughest Heroes Wherever you get your podcast.