Pink Rabbit

My latest book recommendation is 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit' by the remarkable Judith Kerr. She is now 91 years old, still sharp, still focussed, and still working as an author and illustrator for children. She comes over as the most impressive of English ladies, educated, articulate, and a great communicator with all ages. She is delightful. But 'Pink Rabbit', and the follow-up 'Bombs on Aunt Dahlia' begin when she was a nine-year-old German-Jewish child living a comfortable life in Berlin in 1933. Her father was a popular journalist and author and outspokenly anti-Nazi. Elections were to take place, and he had heard that he was at the top of the Nazi blacklist. They needed to get out of Germany, quickly. Within a week, the whole family were refugees.

It's a fascinating story and Judith's strong, humorous spirit shines through the telling. Children are encouraged to read Anne Frank - they should read this too. I learned a lot about London in the blitz that I never knew before.

When I go to London the train gets in at Kings Cross. If I'm going to the British Library, Scholastic Publishing, or one of the places where I sometimes stay I turn left and walk along Euston Road a bit. In future, I'll remember that I'm walking past the site of the Hotel Continental, which in the 1940s was crammed with European refugees until it was destroyed in the Blitz.

Not only London was bombed. That little bit of Tyneside where my family and Tony's came from was a vital place for engineering and shipbuilding, and that was pummelled night after night. Ah, but it wasn't really the engineering works Hitler was aiming for. It was my mum's Auntie Annie. She was bombed out of three different houses, so she reckoned that Hitler was after her and when he got her the war would stop.

He never did get that tough Geordie woman. Another grand lady who lived to tell the tale.