New Books In European Studies

Few people are in a better position to assess different countries and cultures than those caught between them. So it is with Philip Oltermann: a German journalist who came to England while a teenager, and who has lived here and worked here ever since (even managing to marry an English girl). As you would expect from such a background, Philip’s Keeping Up With the Germans: A History of Anglo-German Encounters (Faber and Faber, 2012) is full of closely observed insights about the linkages (and differences) between these two great European rivals. He takes us through familiar territory and introduces us to new ways of seeing, for instance, the way the two square up on the football pitch (with an examination of two of the great players for each country, Bertie Vogts and Kevin Keegan). He brings fresh material to old subjects, such as the apparent gulf between the two when it comes to comedy (the Germans indeed do, he argues, have a sense of humour – but he glories in how the English build humour into