Daniel Johnson
They Think It’s All Over
Don’t Mention the War: The British and the Germans since 1980
By John Ramsden
Little, Brown 433pp £20 order from our bookshop
John Ramsden begins his chronicle of Anglo-German attitudes with an anecdote about a holiday encounter with a German couple in Italy. The conversation turned to Russia. Ramsden asked the ‘handsome, upright’ German if he had visited Russia.
‘Well, just once,’ he wryly responded. ‘I went there in a tank in 1942.’ Pause. ‘To Stalingrad.’ This was followed by a delightful smile and the whispered, ‘I’m sorry. I know we are not supposed to mention the war.’
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
'There can’t be many histories of London that have given room, for instance, to the Koreans of New Malden or the Bombay Emporium of Mayfair in the 1930s.'
Jerry White on @profpanayi's 'Migrant City'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/capital-gains-3
'How do those of us who have enough to eat account for hunger? We often imagine it’s about drought, famine, lack of rain, corruption and incompetence. We need to be much more imaginative.'
@moorehl reviews 'Hunger' by @martin_caparros.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/feed-the-world
You only have until Tuesday to make the most of our Mother's Day offer.
An annual subscription to Literary Review, full access to our online archive, and a free copy of 'Miss Austen', the bestselling novel by Gill Hornby, all for just £35.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/mother/