Member Review

Back in the 1930s, Britain was not just threatened by the external threats posed by Hitler's Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy: there was also an internal danger presented by the homegrown menace of the British Blackshirt movement led by Sir Oswald Mosley,, a dangerous and charismatic aristocrat who had previously been a leading figure in both the Conservative and Labour parties. Thankfully, unlike Hitler's Nazis, the British Union of Fascists, despite attracting the support of the traditionally xenophobic Daily Mail newspaper, never achieved significant electoral backing. As this fiction book reminds us, however, they did succeed in spreading fear amongst London's Jewish community, a campaign of bullying, scapegoating and harassment which culminated in the violence of the Battle of Cable Street in 1936.
As with Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird or Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief, the narrative of Tanya Landman's novel is made all the more powerful, by viewing these powerful, troubling events through the eyes of a child.