Jonathan Freedland (The Traitors Circle) joins September 2025 lineup
As the nation marks 80 years since VJ Day, the Chiswick Book Festival is delighted to announce an extra speaker, in addition to those named earlier to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. The journalist and author Jonathan Freedland will discuss his latest book, which is being published at the start of the Festival on September 11th2025.
The Traitors Circle: The Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them tells the true, but scarcely known, story of a group of secret rebels against Hitler. Drawn from Berlin high society, they include army officers, government officials, two countesses, an ambassador’s widow and a former model. Meeting for a tea party in 1943, they do not know that, sitting around the table, is someone poised to betray them all to the Gestapo.
The book has received terrific reviews ahead of publication.
“The Traitors Circle rivals Freedland’s superb The Escape Artist. A revelatory account of heroism and treachery in Nazi Germany, it is based on original research and reads like a thriller. Totally gripping and timely” – Jonathan Dimbleby.
“Though every word is true, this remarkable book reads like a novel. The narrative style is gripping; the morality searing. This is how the best history books will be written in the future – Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny.
And by ITN’s Tom Bradby on social media: “My first great read of the summer. An utterly gripping true story about Nazi Germany, brilliantly told by @Freedland.”
Freedland, who writes a weekly column for the Guardian and presents The Long View on BBC Radio 4, will replace his equally distinguished Guardian colleague, Julian Borger, who can no longer attend because his work is taking him out of London.
Freedland will be interviewed by BBC news presenter Julian Worricker, who is also chairing another of our WWII sessions, with Chiswick resident Laurence Rees, about his latest book The Nazi Mind. Rees is former head of history programmes at BBC TV, where he produced many award-winning series about the Nazis, Auschwitz and Hitler.
Details and tickets
There are several other BBC and local connections in our 80th anniversary programming.
John Willis will speak about The People’s War, the BBC project which gathered over 47,000 testimonies from ordinary people about their experiences of the Second World War. They sat largely unexplored in the archives for two decades, until Willis began to explore these untold stories of everyday bravery, terror and community, at home and on the front. He is joined by award-winning BBC Panorama reporter and journalist Jane Corbin. Details and tickets.
Historian and broadcaster Taylor Downing went to Latymer Upper School and spoke at last year’s Festival event marking 400 years of the Latymer Foundation. His latest book The Army That Never Was describes the effort to convince German troops that plans to storm Normandy were a mere sideshow, complete with a fictitious army and hundreds of dummy landing craft, tanks, and planes. He talks to author and former BBC journalist Alex Gerlis. Details and tickets.
Our session on World War II love letters is a real family affair. Rosanna Greenstreet’s Dear Loll describes a marriage enduring the hardships of wartime separation, via the letters of Manchester Guardian journalist Gerard Fay (great-grandfather of her co-author and husband Matthew Fay) and his wife Alice. In We’ve All Life Before Us, Caroline Cecil Bose charts the tragic love story of RAF pilot Bob Keddie and his wife Diana via their own letters, diaries and photographs. Details and tickets.
The ’male’ letters will be read by Rosanna’s husband Matthew and Caroline’s husband Mihir Bose, both of whom have strong local connections. Matthew is on the committee of the WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project, responsible for the Enwrought Light sculpture outside St Michael & All Angels Church. And Mihir is a regular podcaster for The Chiswick Calendar as one of the ‘Three Old Hacks’.
The end of the war is also featured in our Local Authors Showcase. The late Joan Langrish was Stranded in France at the age of 16 at the start of World War II but was able to get back to England and join the Secret Intelligence Service: her publisher son David Crane launched her autobiography, written with Sally Mercer, this month.
About the 17th Chiswick Book Festival, September 10th to 15th 2025
www.chiswickbookfestival.net
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The Festival is a non-profit-making community event and all profits will be donated to four charities: St Michael & All Angels Church, which runs and hosts the festival, and three reading charities: Read for Good, Koestler Arts and Read Easy Ealing.
Contact
Torin Douglas,
Director, Chiswick Book Festival: 07860 422992
admin@chiswickbookfestival.net