Latest news with #loveAffairs
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Compulsive Contemporaries to read now: Thirst Trap by Grainne O'Hare, Among Friends by Hal Ebbott, Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild
Thirst Trap by Grainne O'Hare (Picador £16.99, 288pp) Flatmates and Irish party girls Roise, Harley and Maggie are turning 30. Having spent their twenties drinking their way around the bars of Belfast and engaging in a string of chaotic love affairs, they are now grieving Lydia, the fourth member of their gang who died in a car accident a year ago. The nights get wilder as they try to block out their grief rather than process it and the days become darker as a result. The main reason the friends find it almost impossible to move on is because they had a hideous fight with Lydia just before her death and can't stop ruminating over the bad memories. It's compulsively readable and brilliant on friendship and grief. I raced through it. Among Friends by Hal Ebbott (Picador £16.99, 320pp) Emerson and Amos have been best friends since meeting on the first day of college 30 years ago. Although from very different backgrounds, the relationship between the men has only deepened as more time passes. Their wives are friends too and their daughters have grown up together – they are so close that people envy their friendship. Both men live in New York, are wealthy and successful and relish their regular meet-ups. During one of these weekends away with their families, a shocking act is committed that threatens to destroy everything they have built. It turns out that what looks solid and unshakeable on the outside is fragile and changeable on the inside, not so impervious to tension and toxicity as imagined. Childhood trauma, competitiveness and shifting power dynamics have been long buried but are not dead. It's beautifully written and packs a huge emotional punch. I couldn't put it down and kept thinking about it long after I finished. Brilliant. Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild (John Murray £16.99, 336pp) Honor is so desperate for a second child that she finds it difficult to focus on the gorgeous three-year-old she already has, Chloe. Honor's successful husband Tom is also feeling neglected. While their small family is spending Christmas at the Ritz in Paris, Honor is obsessed with finding out whether their surrogate is pregnant or not. After a row with Tom, Honor takes Chloe down for breakfast on their own. When the unthinkable happens, Tom is left agonising over how things might have been. A few years later, Tom's life has changed in every way. He finally feels like he might be able to move on when he uncovers a secret that he can't leave alone, and everything changes again. It's full of wisdom and stuffed with unpredictable twists and turns that kept me engrossed to the end.
Telegraph
24-05-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Nazi diary reveals love affairs on occupied Channel Islands
A Nazi diary has revealed details of soldiers' love affairs on the occupied Channel Islands. Guernsey, Jersey and Alderney were held by Nazi Germany from 1940 until after Victory in Europe Day on May 8 1945. Baron Hans Max von Aufsess, Jersey's then civil administrator, kept a diary where he noted down his day's activities, including trysts with the locals. The officer became known as Jerrybags for sleeping with the enemy. Outlining his relationships with Jersey woman, he claimed there was a 'good understanding between the German soldiers and English girls'. 'As long as it occurs in sufficient secrecy, the girls give in to temptation. The Englishwoman is astoundingly simple, effortless and swift in her lovemaking.' Comparing English and French women, he claimed: 'While the Frenchwoman involves herself totally in the game, which she likes to be conducted along intellectual lines, for the Englishwoman it is a surprisingly straightforward physical matter. 'This direct and uncomplicated fashion of making love is not to be underrated.' His memoir, The Von Aufsess Occupation Diary, was published in 1985. The islands, cut-off from mainland Britain, experienced chronic shortages of gas which shrouded the islands in darkness during the occupation. Curfews were set, radios banned, and ovens were only allowed to be used for an hour a day. But the occupiers enjoyed a lifestyle far removed from the 69,000 islanders – sunbathing on beaches, visiting black market restaurants and riding stallions. 'What a peaceful place this is,' he wrote. 'Everything runs pleasantly. The whole island is charming and romantic. Sunday morning begins riding Satan into the golden dawn. I spend the entire afternoon hunting which is wonderfully relaxing. 'I stand under the giant beech and oak trees at Rozel Manor, fully focused on the invading pigeons. I don't miss a single bird in the sky.' He also describes visiting a black market restaurant in a 'splendid location' above St Aubin's Bay. 'They still have the most wonderful things,' he wrote. 'I feel quite embarrassed to have dined there so well.' Baron von Aufsess spent two years in a British prison before returning to Germany. Now historians have found a rare photograph album of SS officers during the occupation in the Fränkische Schweiz-Museum, in Pottenstein, Bavaria. Von Aufsess's album, unveiled in the Channel 4 documentary Britain Under the Nazis: The Forgotten Occupation, shows holiday snaps rather than wartime photos. In one of the images a man, who appears to be von Aufsess, is pictured sunbathing on a beach with his arm around a brunette woman. Louise Willmot, a historian, told the programme: 'I've never seen this before. This is the Von Aufsess album. It is like a tourist guide to the island, which is the last thing you would expect. 'A copy was presented to Hitler, because Hitler had this great interest in this Channel Island prize that Germany had captured.' On June 15, 1940, Sir Winston Churchill ordered the withdrawal of military personnel from the Channel Islands, abandoning its 94,000 islanders to their fate. Some 25,000 chose to evacuate, but the remainder stayed on the islands undefended. On the evening of June 30, one month after the British evacuation at Dunkirk, German forces seized control.
