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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