My Friend the Enemy

On a visit to Germany in 1934, Nora Briscoe became captivated by National Socialism, so much so that two years later she entrusted her six-year-old son Paul to a German foster family. When war was declared in September 1939, Paul was left stranded in an alien country, while his mother became a Nazi spy operating out of the British Ministry of Supply. In this compelling and deeply moving memoir of war and childhood, Paul Briscoe recalls his harrowing experiences in Nazi Germany, including a raid on a synagogue with his fellow members of the Hitler Youth, and becoming a poster boy for National Socialism in one of the Party's propaganda films. On his return to England in 1945 - leaving behind the German family he hadgrown to love - he was confronted with a mother he did not recognise in a country whose language he could no longer speak. And he learned that his mother had been imprisoned for treason after an intricate M15 sting. Foster Fatherland brings vividly to life this extraordinary story, conveying the pain and confusion of the son but also the ambition, delusion and eventual bitter disappointment of the mother, drawing on her diaries and unpublished autobiography.