Showing posts with label World War II. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World War II. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

WHO AM I?

This answer is among the toughest yet, unless you really know your kings and queens, although there is a multiple choice to help you along. It's from Michael Dean's brilliant 'Hirschfeld's Friends'. The novel tells the enthralling and little known story of the Amsterdam ghetto and the only civilian strike against Nazi occupation. It also features the moral dilemma of the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs during the Nazi occupation of Holland, Hans-Max Hirschfeld. He was a Jew and the Nazis knew that. (Read more about Hirschfeld's Friends and The Crooked Cross.)

The question is, who is the queen in this passage?

Robert was sitting with Queen [X], at a tea-table on the lawn, in the shade of a chestnut tree. He sat with his back to the Dutch royal residence, a mews house in Chester Square, just behind Buckingham Palace. The house, number 77, had recently been hit by a bomb. The damage had been repaired, but the Queen would not let it be repainted, because repainting would not be possible for ordinary citizens back home. She also refused to eat any food not available to her suffering people.

‘Are you still dead set on going back, Robert?’ the Queen asked him.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Who is the queen? Click comment below and give your answer, opinions and reminiscences welcome.

a) Juliana of the Netherlands
b) Queen Elizabeth
c) Wilhelmina of the Netherlands
Read More... WHO AM I?

Saturday, May 29, 2010

WHO AM I?

This one's really hard. Well maybe not for students of WW2 characters. It's from The Crooked Cross by Michael Dean (Quaestor2000) a must read if this period in European history grabs you. Click here to find out more about Michael Dean and his works centred on the Jewish Experience, or here to The Crooked Cross on Amazon UK.
   
‘I got him to draw,’ Ello said. ‘The key is his architectural drawings, not the watercolours. They are done using eidetic memory, and at speed. They are perfect in proportion. He draws the same subject again and again, starting with small detail and working outward. The buildings he draws have strong linear perspective, often multiple perspective, using colour to fill in defined areas only, like the yellow on his drawing of the Old Residence. All this is typical of autistic artist-savants.’ 

Who am I? Or rather of whom does Ello speak? Click 'comment' below with your answer.
Read More... WHO AM I?