I am nothing if not a child of the twentieth century and despite being born 20 years after VE day my generation grew up in the shadow of the second world war. The war was a formative influence on me, not just because my Father fought in it or that my Mothers relations in Poland were all but wiped out in one day, but because it formed such a backbone of narrative in so many stories, films and TV series as I grew up.
The Second World War for the British was, and still is widely seen as the triumph of good over evil. The stories of the second world war often seem to me, to be a way for us to forget our demotion from imperial super power and to recast ourselves as virtuous defenders of freedom rather than the supercilious carpetbaggers we once were.
Savage Continent seeks to explain the context surrounding the end of the second world war, In fact it goes further in showing how the forces that brought Europe to its knees still simmered on after 8th of May 1945. The cold war, the war after the break up of Yugoslavia and the geo political struggle in the middle east are all part for a continuing story that is so well told in this book.
Savage Continent will surely be seen as a seminal book on the Second World War. Ketih Lowe has managed to weave large events, small details, bewildering statistics and heartbreaking narrative seamlessly into this wonderful and disturbing book. No doubt the inter-nicene conflicts that formed the subplot of the Second World War will continue to resonate and disturb the twenty first century as they have in previous centuries but the book ends in expressing real hopes that at least some of the demons may have been tamed.
All books are a discovery. For me the story of how I came to read the book in the first place makes me savour this discovery all the more. Some friends from our road were sitting in our local pub. One of them – Keith handed out an invite for a book launch at our local book store. I had no idea up to this point what Keith did. Of course I went to the book launch and bought my copy which Keith signed with the words ‘see Richard I do write books:)’. At the end of the evening Keith made a short speech thanking us for coming and in a particularly sweet way, warning us that the book was perhaps ‘a little dark’. It must be a strange feeling to see something that has been a major part of your life being handed around your neighbourhood. I can only say that, Keith if you ever read this – you can indeed write books and you have written something profoundly good.
I wonder if we could find ourselves, one day in a different yet equally oppressive regime. Where an unseen bureaucracy controls our lives with unseen leavers, imposing the impersonal on the personal. Certainly they, whoever they might turn out to be, wouldn’t have to look far to find out about our lives. It is worth thinking about when we next swipe that Tesco club card.