The Jena set: Caroline Schlegel's salon in the 1790s, in that small German university town, included Novalis, Schiller, Hegel, Goethe and Humboldt. They radically changed our ideas as the Fr... read more
Nifty historical spy novel, in which an MI5 operative is sent to Paris to deal with a blackmail case with political repercussions. The PM is Ramsay Macdonald.
The author's mother came from a Sikh family that fled the Punjab in Partition; later she moved to Berlin and Washington. A fine memoir of family whose identity and roots have been complicate... read more