Remembering Countess Charlotte de la Bedoyere

Lotti first came to the UK in 1938, travelling on the Kindertransport from her birthplace in Vienna. In the 1960s she took a relatively junior job at publisher Burns and Oates and eventually went on to purchase the publishing assets. Unable to publish under the name 'Burns and Oates', Search Press was born, named after her husband's Catholic newsletter 'Search'.

In 1971, Lotti published her first practical, instructional craft book. Craft gradually took over as the main business of the company, and the company still thrives and prospers today as an independent, family-owned and family-run art and craft publisher; it still operates today in very much the way she set it up.

After her retirement in 1997 she continued to photograph many of Search Press' books but also concentrated on her great interest in natural woodland. She authored, among others, Plant a Natural Woodland and then Portrait of a Woodland, telling the story of the acres of indigenous trees she planted following the great storm of 1987.