Just Passing Through

In 1963, I asked Ex-President Harry Truman, face-to-face, why he decided to drop the Atomic Bomb...

Action-packed and full of incredible reflections on a fascinating life including:

* A Jewish child's memories of the War and VE Day

* Evocative accounts of life and love in the Sixties

* Insider's view on the ups and downs of decades working at the BBC in its heyday (1967-1995)

* Explorations of the hottest and coldest places on earth.

* Singing in the London Philharmonic Choir under the world's greatest conductors (1967-2015)

* Hopes and fears of our 21st-century world: 9/11, terrorism, Brexit, Trump, climate emergency, the pandemic and beyond.

I was born in London on 4 November 1938 - just five days before the Hitler regime embarked upon what came to be labelled Kristallnacht. Far more than a ‘night of broken glass’, this was an unprecedented orgy of cruelty and destruction in the course of which Jewish homes and shops throughout the Reich were smashed, Jews everywhere humiliated and forced to clear up the mess and many of them carted off to camps. Less than a year later, war broke out and my young father went off to do his bit for King and country. Thus, my earliest memories are of wartime London while today, as I write, the world is being invaded by Coronavirus, the deadliest epidemic since the ‘Spanish flu’ of 1918/19. This book is an attempt to say something about the world in which I have lived through a series of colourful and evocative vignettes. As the great French historian Marc Bloch (murdered by the Nazis in 1944) wisely put it many years ago:

“Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past.”

Just Passing Through is a richly illustrated memoir in which many of Daniel Snowman’s own experiences are presented against the wider historical context of the times in which they occurred. The book is broadly chronological and, for all the diversity of its subject matter, it is held together by a powerful central theme: the recurrent attempt to cross traditionally accepted boundaries - personal, religious, cultural, intellectual, political, institutional, geographical et al. All a bit of a high-wire act - and perfect for seeing today's troubling, transitionary times in historical perspective.