Ryan Tubridy

Oh, it's brilliant.

Okay, that's another conversation.

So that is good.

Hello from Hamburg.

Well, indeed, hello from Hamburg.

How nice to have you here.

Welcome in.

Because, actually, let's start with Hamburg.

I just finished this book called Berlin Shuffle.

I know it's not Hamburg, but this is a fascinating little book based in Weimar, Germany.

My youngest daughter was talking to me about Weimar, Germany, so I was reading up on it.

And this book was written by a guy...

who was born in 1915 and died in 1943.

A fascinating story.

Left Germany for Oslo, studied in Paris, ended up during the war, he was settled in England, he was interned, and then was shipped to Australia, and decided I'd come back to England, got on a boat in 1943, torpedoed by a German submarine, died.

27 years old.

He wrote two books.

Here's one of them, Berlin Shuffle.

It's all about men, mostly, and women, down on their luck, as so many were in Berlin during the war, between the wars.

What I found so interesting, apart from the fact it's kind of like Beckett-y, sort of, without being too heavy going, it was, you got a sense of why Germany got so angry.