Taking Up the Torch - Paperback

by Timms (Author)

Taking up the Torch is an unusual, autobiographical narrative that successfully combines subjectivity (how an English person was led by a sequence of educational developments, personal encounters, and historical constraints to become the founder of the German-Jewish Center at the University of Sussex) and objectivity (a book that introduces English and American readers to the important and evolving fields of historical and cultural studies). This autobiography documents the formative experiences of a scholar who was to become a pioneering teacher and researcher in the field of German culture and politics. The aim is to relate the shaping of self to the drift of history in a period of radical social change, extending from the refugee crisis caused by Hitler's seizure of power through the ordeals of the Second World War to post-war reconstruction, and the transformation of Britain into a modern multicultural society. The focus is on the formative role of institutions: a vicarage childhoo