Getting back to his childhood, Eric was sent to a French school in London for four years, and during the summer would spend time in Amsterdam with his elder sister, Susie, staying with their Dutch and German grandparents. Their grandmother was the Dutch diva, Betty van den Bosch, who was one of the top European solo mezzo-sopranos of the time, working with the Dutch Concertgebow Orkest as a soloist with conductors such as Mengelberg, Erich Kleiber and Bruno Walter. (www.dutchdivas.net) While they stayed in Amsterdam his grandmother encouraged him to sing. Eric and his sister used to eavesdrop on her lessons that she gave the next aspiring diva in her music room seated behind her white grand piano. “ It was all the usual scales and arpeggios used to exercise the voice but we soon got the hang it of and used to copy the student. We were soon silenced, like naughty children would be, as her two sliding stained-glass windows parted opening to the adjoining sitting room, from where we peeked the view of the lesson on our knees.”