ETHNIC CLEANSiNG OFA PERSONAL NATURE; The secret purposes by david

Based on a story from his own family history, The Secret Purposes marks a move away from the contemporary-set comedic fare that has so far formed the basis of David Baddiel's budding literary career.

Instead of modern-day London we delve back into the black days before the outbreak of the second world war, to Konigsberg in East Prussia, where Isaac Fabian, sensing the gathering storm, flees Germany for Britain with his Aryan wife and their baby daughter. The committed communist finds work in the kitchens of a Cambridge college but is later interned with thousands of other German Jews on the Isle of Man. Considered not German enough in the land of his birth, he now finds himself too German for the country that sheltered him. In Douglas, Isaac meets June Murray of the Ministry of Information, who has taken it upon herself to investigate the reports of atrocities she sees coming out of Germany and Poland. A wartime love affair ensues with all the attendant tragedies and regrets.

As an essay on a chapter of history which has been conveniently forgotten, The Secret Purposes is illuminating and asks difficult questions about the attitude of Britain - and Britons - to the Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. The issue of how much the government knew about conditions has intrigued historians for generations. The inclusion of a quotation from Harold Nicholson from 1945 - "Although I loathe anti-Semitism, I do dislike Jews" - probably sums up the attitudes of many in the British establishment. Moreover, Baddiel writes with one eye on today's headlines: substitute Jewish for Kurdish or Albanian, swap the Isle of Man for Dungavel and the story has a resonance beyond the merely historical.

Despite that, the subject matter is deeply personal - Baddiel's own grandfather, also called Fabian, was interned on the Isle of Man during the second world war. And perhaps that's the problem: there's a sense that Baddiel is undertaking a cleansing here and, while he displays great clarity of thought, that fact imbues his prose with a clunkiness. He needs to get things down on paper and in doing so he never builds any sense of drama or danger or even loss. A great ITV mini-series this; but as a novel it left me wanting well, less and more.

David Baddiel, EIBF, August 19

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