The Pity of War
England and Germany, Bitter Friends, Beloved Foes
by Miranda Seymour
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Pub Date Nov 01 2014 | Archive Date Oct 24 2014
Description
Miranda Seymour tells the forgotten story of England’s centuries of profound connection and increasingly rivalrous friendship with Germany, linked by a shared faith, a shared hunger for power, a shared culture (Germany never doubted that Shakespeare belonged to them, as much as to England), and a shared leadership. German monarchs ruled over England for three hundred years—and only ceased to do so through a change of name.
This vibrant and heart-breaking history—told through the lives of princes and painters, soldiers and sailors, bakers and bankers, charlatans and saints—traces two countries so entwined that one German living in England in 1915 refused to choose where his allegiance lay. It was, he said, as if his parents had quarreled. Germany’s connection to the island it loved, patronized, influenced, and fought was unique. Indeed, British soldiers went to war in 1914 against a country to which many of them—as one freely confessed the week before his death on the battlefront—felt more closely connected than to their own. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished papers and personal interviews, the author has recovered vibrant stories that remind us—poignantly, wittily, and tragically—of the powerful bonds many have chosen to forget.
Advance Praise
Most
readable and compulsive. . . . By writing her book as a patchwork of
individual tales, Seymour allows this story of torn loyalties and
proliferating influences to retain its messiness and its colour.
— The Guardian
Miranda Seymour’s . . . hugely entertaining and absorbing study . . . keeps
the political, military and diplomatic dimensions as a framework and
focuses on two centuries of personal relationships, families and
friendships.
— Daily Telegraph
Marketing Plan
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Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9781442241749 |
PRICE | $34.00 (USD) |
Average rating from 8 members
Featured Reviews
Timely reminder of the long standing often ambivalent yet ultimately profitable, for both nations, relationship between England and Germany.
Full review available on blog after 11th November 2014
I’m not sure why this book hasn't received more attention, as I found it extremely interesting, and it’s a shame there are not more reviews to attract other readers. It’s an exploration of the bonds that have existed between England and Germany over the centuries and how those bonds were almost destroyed due to two devastating wars. Political, intellectual and family ties had kept the two countries firmly linked until then. In fact so many were the links that the book sometimes suffers from too many characters dropping in and out – I could have done with a handy list - and occasionally I felt the book lost focus and rambled a bit. Nevertheless it’s an impressive work of research and scholarship, presented in an accessible way, and will appeal to the general reader and amateur historian, if not to more academic readers.