The hilarious life of eccentric Lady Mendl – remembered by the author of Madeline

• Best known as the creator of the Madeline children’s books, the Austrian-born writer and illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans was the author of another 40-odd volumes, most of which were for adult readers. Out of print for many years, two of the very best have recently been reissued. Hotel Splendide (1941) details Bemelmans’s escapades working in the hospitality industry in New York in the early 1920s. (He arrived in America when he was 16, and spent the next two decades in the business, eventually quit