The Black Book: The Britons on the Nazi Hitlist

Online Event

Historian Sybil Oldfield will be in conversation with writer and journalist Caroline Moorehead about The Black Book, her spinechilling but fascinating new publication.

In 1939, the Gestapo created a list of names: the Britons whose removal would be the Nazis’ first priority in the event of a successful invasion. Who were they? What had they done to provoke Germany? For the first time, this book uncovers their stories and reveals why the Nazis feared their influence.

Those on the hitlist – more than half of them naturalised refugees – were many of Britain’s most gifted and humane inhabitants. Among their numbers we find the writers E.M.Forster and Virginia Woolf, humanitarians and religious leaders, scientists and artists, the social reformers Margery Fry and Eleanor Rathbone MP, the artists Jacob Epstein and Oscar Kokoschka.

By examining these targets of Nazi hatred, Oldfield not only sheds light on the Gestapo worldview; she also movingly reveals a network of truly exemplary Britons: mavericks, moral visionaries and unsung heroes.

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This event is held in partnership with the Association of Jewish Refugees.