The Atlantic Gap 
Neal Ascherson
As soon as you realise how good it is, this book will frighten you. This is not just a history. It is a highly intrusive biography, especially if, like me, you belong to the British generations who were children before and during the war. When we were learning to read, Europe was a dark word, an inaccessible ‘over there’ place of suffering and menace. But as we grew up and the war ended, so Europe changed into a shore which could be visited, a site for taking independent steps, accumulating our own experience, forming our early opinions. In other words, ‘postwar Europe’ is us. How will we look, in these pages?
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From the LRB letters page: [ 1 December 2005 ] Jim Harper.
Neal Ascherson’s latest book is Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland. He was the Observer correspondent in Bonn from 1963 to 1968.
Other articles by this contributor:
After the Revolution · Neal Ascherson reports from Georgia
Diary · Neal Ascherson among the icebergs
Oo, Oo! · Khrushchev the Stalinist
Even Now · The Silence of Günter Grass
On with the Pooling and Merging · The Incomparable Tom Nairn
The Media Did It · Neal Ascherson remembers the Wall
Hitler’s Teeth · Berlin 1945
Law v. Order · Putin’s strategy
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