The Windermere Children (BBC 2, 27 January, 2020) follows the true story of a group of children, recently freed from concentration camps who, in 1945, were brought to Windermere for four months of rehabilitation under the auspices of child psychologist Oscar Friedmann (Thomas Kretschmann) and philanthropist Leonard Montefiore (Tim McInnerny). Made to be transmitted on […]
Hitler’s Secret by Rory Clements
Autumn 1941. The war is going badly for Britain and its allies. If Hitler is to be stopped, a new weapon is desperately needed. In Cambridge, professor Tom Wilde is approached by an American intelligence officer who claims to know of such a weapon – one so secret even Hitler himself isn’t aware of its […]
The ‘hidden’ Nazis of Argentina
Catherine Hokin’s latest novel, The Fortunate Ones, tells the story of Felix Thalberg, a young printer’s apprentice, whose life is changed forever when he meets a girl in a crowded Berlin dance hall. Despite his efforts to find her, Hannah vanishes that night without trace and it is two years before Felix sees her again, […]
The Fortunate Ones by Catherine Hokin
Every day he stood exactly where he was directed. He listened for his number, shouted his answer in the freezing cold. He was ragged and he was starving, but he was alive. He was one of the fortunate ones whom fate had left standing. And he needed to stay that way. For Hannah. Berlin, 1941. Felix […]
The Occupation by Deborah Swift
1940, Jersey. When Nazi forces occupy Jersey in the English Channel Islands, Céline Huber, who is married to a German, must decide where her loyalty lies. Love for her island, and fear for her Jewish friend Rachel, soon propel her into a dangerous double life. Meanwhile, Céline’s husband Fred is conscripted into the Wehrmacht in […]
Review: A Ration Book Childhood by Jean Fullerton
When author Nicola Cornick agreed to review Jean Fullerton’s latest novel, A Ration Book Childhood, she had no idea that her first taste of these World War II East End books would end up with her paying it the ultimate compliment… buying the rest of the series. A Ration Book Childhood is a richly-textured and […]
Don’t mention the war!
What is it about the Second World War that fascinates us, seemingly endlessly? Historian Keith Lowe looks at the lasting legacy of the war and the myths and misconceptions that cluster around it
Review: When the Germans Came by Duncan Barrett
The occupation of the British Channel Islands from June 1940 to May 1945 rarely features in the popular narrative of the Second World War nor has it, for the most part, captured the attention of writers, Mary Chamberlain tells Historia in her review of Duncan Barrett’s When the Germans Came, the paperback reprint of his 2018 account, Hitler’s British Isles.