“The Greatest Escape” by Neil Churches (published by Macmillan)
The day an entire POW camp slipped away
Great, greater, greatest .... The film “The Great Escape” from 1963 immortalised the break-out by 76 Allied prisoners-of-war from the supposedly escape-proof Stalag Luft III camp in Germany in March 1944. But greater than great, apparently, was “The Greatest Escape”, the most successful POW ...
“Stalin’s Architect. Power and Survival in Moscow” by Deyan Sudjic (published by Thames & Hudson)
Murder and ambition – where to draw the line?
The question is, as posed by this biography of the life and career of Boris Mikhailovich Iofan (1891-1976), if you have worked your way up to be the state archictect to the murderous megalomaniac Joseph Stalin, how do you survive years close to the ...
Surviving the Holocaust and Stalin – The Amazing Story of the Seiler Family
A new memoir set in Hungary has been released. The title covers a dark period of the nation’s history including the horrors of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and the labour camps experienced by our Jewish population, and traces what happened after the war, under the brutal ...
“Maigret and the Penguin Books” (published by the Penguin Collectors Society)
Multitude of covers covering a multitude of sins
The world is divided neatly into collectors and others, the latter being people who scratch their heads trying to understand why there are oddballs around them who amass such bizarre items as different strands of barbed wire, back scratchers and banana stickers (yes, it’s ...
Netherlands to be guest of honour at Budapest Book Festival
The Netherlands will be the guest of honour at the 28th Budapest International Book Festival held between September 28 and October 1 at the Millenaris Park, organisers said on Wednesday.
“Ian Fleming & Georges Simenon. The World of Bond and Maigret” (published by ERIS gems)
Two best sellers chat and swap secrets
Writers Ian Fleming, an Englishman, 1908-1964, and Georges Simenon, a Belgian, 1903-1989, created two of the greatest characters in 20th-century fiction – licensed-to-kill Secret Service agent James Bond 007 and Parisian detective Chief Superintendent Jules Maigret. The two authors met for a conflab in ...
“The New Investigations of Inspector Maigret” by Georges Simenon (published by Penguin Books)
Human bloodhound gives evildoers short shrift
Georges Simenon having died in 1989, the uncovering now of any “new investigations” would be exciting news indeed for fans of our favourite Parisian policeman. Simenon bequeathed us 75 “Maigret” novels and 28 short stories, and the latter is what we have here – ...
“Simenon. The Man, The Books, The Films” by Barry Forshaw (published by Oldcastle Books)
Detective, defectives under the magnifying glass
I wouldn’t call it an obsession, as such, but certainly a deep fascination. It began decades ago with the many books and then spread to the author himself – The Man – and finally on to the resultant films. Not in quite the same ...
“Colditz. Prisoners of the Castle” by Ben Macintyre (published by Viking)
Fresh understanding of an oft-told tale
Books about Colditz run into the dozens, and others about escapes from German prisoner of war camps would be in triple figures, so author Macintyre is necessarily offering something new, what’s described as access to an unprecedented range of material that adds up to ...
“Saving Freud: A Life in Vienna and an Escape to Freedom in London” by Andrew Nagorski (published by Icon)
Psychoanalyst’s mind wasn’t clear on threat to himself
It is March 12, 1938 and German troops are marching into Austria without a shot fired. Adolf Hitler is absorbing the country of his birth into the Third Reich. His anti-Semitism is vicious and Jews have been fleeing him for years. But Vienna’s most ...
