1066 and all that...

Actually a paragraph over 1066 pages of text in Zara Steiner's book The Triumph of the Dark which I finished today. It is the diplomatic history of Europe between 1933 and 1939 and sums up Dr Steiner's whole career. One of her teachers was the last "democratic" Chancellor of Weimar Germany, Heinrich Bruening- a really boring man according to the author. These pen portraits are a real joy of the book, not just the famous like Chamberlain and Hitler (a real dialogue of the deaf) but also others who have slipped off the grid. There is the Polish Foreign Minister Josef Beck whom no one trusted and the equally slippery French Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet.

This is a book brimming with insight, well argued judgments and immaculate scholarship. It is the benchmark against which all others must be measured.

It was a book which, despite its length, I was somewhat sorry to finish.