From last month’s classic Dickens novel to a tale of political espionage and historical fact. “Munich” by Robert Harris.
Harris is an excellent writer and can credibly breathe life into sometimes dusty historical events. An easy read and ideal for a hot June afternoon.
Like many Harris novels “Munich” blends fact and fiction. The novel describes four fateful days in September 1938, and centres on the intense often acrimonious negotiations in Munich between Neville Chamberlain PM and Adolf Hitler, in an attempt to prevent conflict and escalation erupting in Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland.
Most of us will be familiar with newsreels of the time as Chamberlain returns to Great Britain with the Munich Agreement and says “Peace in our Time” Chamberlain was considered by some people to be a weak man, an appeaser, Winston Churchill, ever the more charismatic and dynamic minister was harsh in his judgement that this agreement was about dishonour not peace.
Harris however gives a much more sympathetic portrayal of Chamberlain who ever mindful of the savagery and death of WW1 was at pains to prevent another catastrophic war affecting Europe and Great Britain. The recent film adaptation of the novel “The Edge of War” Jeremy Irons playing Chamberlain, captured this more sympathetic view of the man. Well, we all know how the historical event unfolds but then hindsight makes us all very clever.
Into this frenzy of negotiations Harris adds the fictional element in the form of a tense gripping tale of political espionage the two protagonists Hugh Legat civil servant in the British Diplomatic service and his former friend and fellow student at Oxford, Paul von Hartmann who is in the party accompanying Hitler in Munich in the role of interpreter Hartmann is however part of an undercover Anti-Hitler group who also want peace and not war. Hartmann gets hold of a top-secret paper that shows Hitler’s intention to go to war with Europe and GB and thus ignoring any agreements, Hartmann is risking discovery and the inevitable torture and death that would follow. Hartmann conspires to get the paper into Legat’s hands in order that he can warn
Chamberlain, however Chamberlain reluctantly meets Hartmann but refuses to heed the warnings and the rest, as one says, is history.
All 8 members of the group present voted very positively for this novel. And as often transpires the group had a further very lengthy discussion comparing current world turmoil and the political leaders we are all now very familiar with, the same power games and self-aggrandisement that seems as evident now in shaping our world as they did in the 1940s. Whatever history teaches us we never seem able to learn any valuable lessons from it.
Gaby Mauger, Group Leader