📚 🚶Introducing The Past is Myself
Discover our November book
Dear walking book clubbers,
The Past is Myself is a phenomenal memoir about life in The Third Reich as an English woman married to a German. It shows a different side to this deeply troubling part of history, and is full of surprising insights, moving moments, and is completely gripping. I can’t wait to discuss it with you.
Please scroll down to find:
Details of our November events
Discussion points to get you thinking
Links to read and listen on
News of December - tickets are now on sale.
Before getting on to our November book, I’d love to invite you to a supper club on Wednesday 20th November at Melia White House hotel, just next to Regent’s Park. I’m hosting this to mark a special “Readers’ Retreat” suite that I’ve curated for the hotel. Tickets are £60 and include what looks to me like a feast, along with a chat about books and my picks for the Readers’ Retreat suite. I would love to see you there! Book HERE.
Our November The Past is Myself events
Please note that for the benefit of your fellow walkers, you need to have read the book before coming along to a walking book club. If you’ve not read the book, you are very welcome to join the zoom instead.
Emily’s Regent’s Park Walking Book Club: Friday 15th November 11-12.45pm, setting off from Daunt Books, 84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, £8-15 ***Please note the early start time this month!***
Emily’s Hampstead Heath Walking Book Club: Sunday 17th November, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £8-15
Emily’s Zoom Book Club: Monday 18th November, 8-9pm, £1-15
Buy The Past is Myself from Daunt Books HERE and receive 10% off using the code WBC at checkout, or just tell them you’re in Emily’s Walking Book Club if you’re buying it in the shop.
You can buy the beautiful Slightly Foxed hardback edition HERE with 10% off using the code EMILY24.
Introduction & Discussion Points
In 1934, a young English woman, Christabel Burton, married a German man, Peter Bielenberg, and adopted German citizenship, thinking that Hitler was a bad joke: ”I can assure you,” said Peter, “the Germans won’t be so stupid as to fall for that clown.” What follows is a compelling portrait of daily life in Nazi Germany for an Englishwoman who despised Hitler, while knowing that dissent meant death. She raises children, shelters from devastating Allied bombings, and pleads with the Gestapo to release her husband after he’s caught in a plot to bring down Hitler. This is a fascinating and unique perspective on life in Nazi Germany, which also raises important questions about what goes unsaid.
There’s a huge amount to consider in this compelling memoir; here are a few points to start the ideas flowing:
Generalisations and individuals
One of the book’s great strengths is how it repeatedly goes beyond lazy generalisations to tell individual stories. Everyone in these pages is a human, rather than a Nazi or a Jew. In this, it reminded me a little of our September pick, about the Biafran War, Half of a Yellow Sun. Are there any individual stories in the book (aside from Bielenberg’s) that are particularly striking to you? Are there any characters with whom you weren’t expecting to sympathise, but do? Herr Neisse, her gardener and Blockwart, springs to my mind.
An alien in …
Bielenberg’s sense of displacement was particularly pronounced as her new country was at war with her old, but I’m sure that many of us can relate to her experience of living somewhere other than their birthplace, making a home in a new country. Is there anything about Bielenberg’s struggle to reconcile her Englishness with being in Germany that resonates with your personal experience? Perhaps her struggle to understand thick accents?! This point takes me back to our first book of the year, The Ginger Tree.
A different side of the Third Reich
In her episode of Desert Island Discs (link below), Bielenberg says she wrote the book out of ‘a sense of duty’, wanting to pen the ‘missing book’ about Germans who weren’t Nazis. How did you find learning about this other side of Germany? Did you already know about Adam von Trott and the plot to overthrow Hitler? Is there anything particularly unexpected in the book? And what do you think of Amanda Theunissen’s point in her Slightly Foxed article (link below) that it feels scarcely credible that so many Germans didn’t know about the Holocaust?
So much more to discuss, but this is at least a beginning…
Discover more about Christabel Bielenberg
Definitely listen to Christabel Bielenberg’s fascinating episode of Desert Island Discs, HERE. You can also watch her be interviewed by Andy Mahoney in 1987 HERE.
Do read Amanda Thienussen’s piece about the book for Slightly Foxed (printed as the introduction to their beautiful hardback edition) HERE.
I was surprised to discover there is a 1988 BBC 4-part screen adaptation directed by Dennis Potter, starring Elizabeth Hurley, which you can watch on Prime, HERE. I haven’t yet, but am extremely intrigued!
Finally, thanks to walking book clubber Charlotte, who recommends the exhibition ‘War and the Mind’ at the Imperial War Museum, which has a great thematic overlap with the book. Find out more HERE.
December *** tickets now on sale***
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
In this classic children’s novel, dearly loved by grown-ups too, we follow the lives of the March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, as they grow up in Massachusetts against the backdrop of the American Civil War. Beginning with an unforgettable Christmas, we join them for ice skating, piano-playing, writing, hair-cutting (!), love affairs and devastating illness. It is a delight to revisit this beloved children’s story as an adult, while also taking note of the religiosity and gender politics at play.
As Jo says, in the novel’s opening line: “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.” So for our Christmas events, we invite you to pick a book from your own shelves, wrap it up and swap it with another member in our Emily’s Walking Book Club literary Secret Santa.
Children who have read the book are very welcome to attend this one!
Intrigued? Watch the beautiful 2019 film adaptation - HERE’s the trailer.
In Regent’s Park: Friday 13th December, 12-1.45pm, setting off from Daunt Books, 84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, £8-15
On Hampstead Heath: Sunday 15th December, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £8-15
On Zoom: Monday 16th December, 8-9pm, £1-15
Buy Little Women from Daunt Books HERE and receive 10% off using the code WBC at checkout, or just tell them you’re in Emily’s Walking Book Club if you’re buying it in the shop.
Happy reading,
Emily