Dominic Sandbrook
The Curtain Falls
1946: The Making of the Modern World
By Victor Sebestyen
Macmillan 464pp £25 order from our bookshop
On 1 July 1946, an eight-year-old boy called Henryk Blaszczyk went missing from his home in Kielce, central Poland. His panic-stricken parents went to the police, but two days later little Henryk turned up with a basket of cherries, having gone on an epic expedition to pick fruit from the family’s old house some twenty kilometres away. Frightened of getting into trouble, however, Henryk concocted a story about having been kidnapped by Jews. The police investigated, quickly realised that the boy was lying and gave him a stern telling-off. In the meantime, however, the news had got out.
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
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw
'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me