The essays in this book discuss the lives of Germans living in Manchester, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, combining historical study with personal and autobiographical material. Chapters are devoted to Frederick Engels, Fanny Lewald, Rabbi Felix Carlebach and W. G. Sebald, with additional discussion of Elizabeth Gaskell and the Manchester writer Geraldine Jewsbury. One chapter focuses on Jewish refugees from Nazism who set up new industries in Manchester, including the author’s father. The final chapter takes up the theme of reparation, which runs through the book, relating the work of non-Jewish Germans engaged in the project of ‘making amends’ in their own country for the crimes of an earlier generation.

Janet Wolff is Professor Emerita of Cultural Sociology at the University of Manchester