A Noble Combat: The Letters of Shiela Grant Duff and Adam von Trott zu Solz 1932-1939

by Klemens von Klemperer

Overview

One of the most eloquent and moving correspondences of the twentieth century, the letters that passed between Shiela Grant Duff and Adam von Trott zu Solz tell of a friendship—tender, strained, and finally tragic—between a young Englishwoman, who became a distinguished foreign correspondent in the 1930s, and a German Rhodes Scholar, who eventually joined the resistance against Hitler and was executed by the Nazis after the abortive coup of 1944. The letters begin at Oxford, where Shiela and Adam moved in a circle of friends that shared fervent dreams of social justice and a new Europe. The story continues to the eve of war, when their relationship shattered under the pressures of their own temperaments and the mounting European crisis. Graceful and evocative, these letters paint an intimate portrait of a troubled generation of young, cosmopolitan, and politically committed intelligentsia in the 1930s and give us a lasting record of the social world and political tensions of the era before the Second World War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198229087
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/19/1988
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.06(d)

About the Author

Smith College, Massachusetts

Editorial Reviews

"An extraordinarily moving account of a friendship wrecked by politics."—Sunday Telegraph

From the Publisher