Book synopsis
Historian and author Daniel Snowman (b. 1938) writes of a Jewish child’s memories of the War, gives colourful inside accounts of life in Cambridge, JFK’s America (including Civil Rights) and the new University of Sussex, of the BBC in its heyday, choral concerts under the world’s top conductors and extended visits to the Arctic and Antarctic. Daniel watches Churchill making one of his final speeches, interviews Harry Truman about Hiroshima, spends a week in Bayreuth with Wagner’s daughter-in-law, meets Pope John-Paul II, Isaiah Berlin and Lord Snowdon, while getting to know Plácido Domingo and the most famous among the ‘Hitler Emigrés’.
About the Author
I was born in London on 4 November 1938 – just five days before the Hitler regime embarked upon what came to be labelled Kristallnacht. Far more than a ‘night of broken glass’, this was an unprecedented orgy of cruelty and destruction in the course of which Jewish homes and shops throughout the Reich were smashed, Jews everywhere humiliated and forced to clear up the mess and many of them carted off to camps. Less than a year later, war broke out and my young father went off to do his bit for King and country. Thus, my earliest memories are of wartime London while today, as I write, the world is being invaded by Coronavirus, the deadliest epidemic since the ‘Spanish flu’ of 1918/19. This book is an attempt to say something about the world in which I have lived through a series of colourful and evocative vignettes. As the great French historian Marc Bloch (murdered by the Nazis in 1944) wisely put it many years ago:
“Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past.”
My review
I haven’t reviewed many non fiction books on my blog but in the last month I have reviewed two so I am slowly adding more to my reading lists.
This book was fascinating to read. Very well written and living his life amongst all of these global differences to the world was fascinating to me. The Author covers all subjects and shows how driven he was to achieve all he has. He also covers more recent topics such as Coronavirus and Donald Trump.
It is a book that will make you want to look into things in more detail too. I throughly enjoyed it.
Disclaimer – Thank you to the Author and Literally PR for the gifted copy of this book for my honest review.