The Invasion Handbook

Description

The Invasion Handbook sets out to recount the origins of the Second World War. The result is a triumph of technique - a myriad staging of historical realities through the poet's intense and bitter scrutiny of the particulars of time and place. The volume opens with the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919, and with the answering but ill-fated attempt of the Locarno Treaties of 1925 to restore the torn fabric of Europe. It evokes Weimar culture, Hitler's rise to power, the beginnings of the persecution of the Jews, and ends with the Battle of Britain.

Tom Paulin was born in Leeds in 1949 but grew up in Belfast, and was educated at the universities of Hull and Oxford. He has published seven collections of poetry as well as a Selected Poems 1972-1990, two major anthologies, two versions of Greek drama and several critical works, including The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style. Well-known for his appearances on the BBC's Late Review, he is also the G. M. Young Lecturer in English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford.