Some critics may have been cold but Rabbi Stuart Altshuler had no hesitation recommending Woman in Gold to his Belsize Square flock this week.

The film is based on the story of Maria Altmann (played by Helen Mirren, below) who fought to reclaim from the Austrian government several paintings the Nazis took from her family.

But the film used some poetic licence, the rabbi's mother Dorothy told him and she would know: Maria Altmann lived across the street and they were friends.

There was no dramatic escape from Austria. Maria and her husband were married in Switzerland, where some of the family had already moved, and were advised by her mother after the wedding to stay.

And as for those rumours of an affair between Maria's aunt Adele, the "Woman in Gold" and the painter who painted her, Gustav Klimt, that, according to Mrs Altshuler, was simply not true.