True to Both My Selves

When I was at school and university in England I felt Irish when I was there and English when I was in Ireland. My identity confusion was nothing like that experienced by Katrin FitzHerbert and her family in the 20th century.

Her autobiography became, as she says, a family project giving it more breadth and depth than she alone could recollect. It succeeds on every level. It is easily the best book I have read so far this year (but it’s only May). Her Anglo-German family, in London in the first war, was ostracised finally being deported to Germany in 1919. Katrin was born in Berlin in 1936 and it was not until 1946 that she with her brother and her English mother (who by then had renounced her British nationality) was repatriated to England. Then the difficulties suppressing her past began. Her father and grandfather were both serving Nazis, indeed her father was imprisoned at the end of the war.

This is more than an autobiography. It is a page-turning psycho drama told with unflinching candour. It is also a rollercoaster ride through turbulent times (understatement). Many authors might have called it “A Childhood in Berlin” and left it at that and on one level that is what it is but it goes much deeper and spans most of the last century. She has an extraordinary story to tell.