Reading 22

“Here in Britain, […] in a Britain that defended the rights of the individual as no other country did, I often wonder what would have happened if the Germans had come. We don’t know. When I was young, I was still full of that great dream: the British would have behaved magnificently, they would never have delivered anyone to the enemy, there would never have been a Vichy, a Xavier Vallat, a concentration camp. But what do I know? It’s a hope. We have no proof.”

- George Steiner, A Long Saturday: Conversations (2014)