Simon Heffer
After The Firestorm
Dresden
By Fredrick Taylor
Bloomsbury 544pp £20
IN SEEKING TO relate to his readers the enormity of the destruction, both human and material, that was wrought on Dresden by the RAF on the night of 13 February 1945, Frederick Taylor strikes a typically honest note. Discussing the task of trying to clear up the debris and the corpses in the immediate aftermath, he writes that 'the scale and horror of the work to be done after the firestorm ... was, like the experiences of those who survived the destruction of central Dresden, almost impossible to describe with any hope of authenticity'. Of course Taylor is right, but the genius of his book - and I must say at once that it is an absolutely magnificent work both of scholarship and of narration - is that it gives us enough background, context, description, anecdote and information to help guide our imaginations towards forming a picture of just how horrific the raid and its aftermath must have been.
As Taylor points out, the enduring moral question about Dresden has all too often been answered by those who take their cue from the celebrated humanitarian Josef Goebbels. When that propagandist finally owned up to the fact that the centre of Dresden had been more or less obliterated by the
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘The Second World War was won in Oxford. Discuss.’
@RankinNick gives the question his best shot.
Nicholas Rankin - We Shall Fight in the Buttery
Nicholas Rankin: We Shall Fight in the Buttery - Oxford’s War 1939–1945 by Ashley Jackson
literaryreview.co.uk
For the first time, all of Sylvia Plath’s surviving prose, a massive body of stories, articles, reviews and letters, has been gathered together in a single volume.
@FionaRSampson sifts it for evidence of how the young Sylvia became Sylvia Plath.
Fiona Sampson - Changed in a Minute
Fiona Sampson: Changed in a Minute - The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath by Peter K Steinberg (ed)
literaryreview.co.uk
The ruling class has lost its sprezzatura.
On porky rolodexes and the persistence of elite reproduction, for the @Lit_Review: