WW2
Émigré, Photographer, Secret Agent: An Extraordinary Life
A communist activist and Soviet agent, the Austrian-born Edith Tudor-Hart helped drive modernist photography and set in motion Britain’s most notorious spy ring.
Who was Edith Tudor-Hart? For a long time, and especially after the revelation of her crucial role in the creation of modern Britain's most notorious spy ring – the Cambridge Five – she existed more as a cipher than as a real person. I first encountered her name well...
Daria Santini
Daria Santini was born in Rome and educated in Italy and Germany. Her most recent books – The Exiles. Actors, Artists and Writers Who Fled the Nazis for London (Bloomsbury 2019) and A Woman Named Edith. Émigré, Photographer, Secret Agent: the Extraordinary Life of Edith Tudor Hart (Yale University Press 2026) – move beyond her earlier academic work to explore biography and cultural history in a wider, more personal register.
Books Click on any of the books covers below to either buy or get more information on AmazonArticles Click on the links below to read the full article[dpdfg_filtergrid custom_query="advanced" use_taxonomy_terms="on" multiple_taxonomies="name_of_author"...
AoH Book Club: James Dunford Wood on The Big Little War
The author discusses the overlooked Anglo-Iraqi War of 1941, exploring how the improvised defence of RAF Habbaniya may have had far-reaching consequences for the Second World War.
Hi James – your book, The Big Little War, was published just over three years ago. It seems apt that this month marks the 85th anniversary of the coup which led to the extraordinary events that you recount in the book, and you have a new, extended edition of the book...
Episode 261
‘When That Man Is Dead and Gone’: The Curious Death of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler’s death promised closure, but instead unleashed competing narratives, each of them revealing just how wartime fantasies, propaganda and post-war politics shaped the meaning of his demise.
From 9pm on Tuesday 1 May 1945, the programming on North German radio underwent an abrupt tonal shift. Light, uplifting tunes gave way to sombre music, interspersed with urgent instructions to ‘stand by’ for an important government message. 90 minutes later, three...
Nuremberg: The Translator’s Tale, by Helen Fry
An account of Howard Triest, a Jewish interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials, lays out the personal toll of psychologically examining the perpetrators of the Holocaust
80 years ago, one of the great courtroom dramas of the 20th century took place in Germany: the Nuremberg trials of the top Nazi leaders. But while the whole world was focusing on events in the court room, a second, less well-known drama was also taking place in their...
Nuremberg: A Witness to Justice
An account of the Nuremberg Trials through the experiences of Howard Triest, a German-Jewish refugee and translator who confronted the leading figures of Nazi Germany as justice was brought to bear.
On 20 November 1945 twenty-one defendants flanked by US guards were brought along the covered walkway from the prison cells, up the stairs, through a door behind the prisoners’ box and into the courtroom. This was the opening day of the Nuremberg Trials, where the...
Episode 259
Who Will Rescue Us?, by Laura Hobson Faure
An affecting and meticulous study of Jewish child refugees during World War II is based on personal testimony.
This is the story of the Jewish children who fled to America and France on the eve of WW2, thus avoiding incarceration or death in the Holocaust. Based around oral and written testimonies, Who Will Rescue Us? traces the efforts of networks of relief workers and aid...