BESOTTED BY OUR ECCENTRIC TWIN.

GERMANIA: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF GERMANS ANCIENT AND MODERN by Simon Winder (Picador, £18.99) AMONG the documents concerning German unification published last year by the Foreign Office, there is a minute written on the day after the Berlin Wall opened by Sir Patrick Wright, then Permanent Under Secretary: "I understand that the Prime Minister [Mrs Thatcher] was frankly horrified by the sight of the Bundestag [German Parliament] rising to sing Deutschland über alles when the news of developments on the Berlin Wall came in." This tableau sums up the dysfunctional relationship that persists between the British and the Germans. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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