Music Behind Barbed Wire: A Diary of Summer 1940

The internment diary of Austrian composer Hans G?l (1890-1987) with a biographical study of his life and career. Includes a CD of first recordings of three of his works from the period.

The Austrian composer Hans G?l (1890-1987) was one of many Jewish refugees who fled to Britain from Hitler's Third Reich only to find themselves interned in prison camps in Britain as 'enemy aliens' - the result of Churchill's panic decision to 'collar the lot'. G?l thus spent five months over the summer of 1940 in internment camps - first in Donaldson's Hospital in Edinburgh, then at Huyton, near Liverpool, and finally in the Central Promenade Camp on theIsle of Man. Many of G?l's fellow internees went on, like G?l himself, to become shaping forces in the intellectual life of Britain - but in captivity this colourful parade of characters had to put up with bureaucratic inertia and the indifference of their captors to their undeserved fate. The diary G?l kept during his captivity vividly describes the difficulties the internees had to overcome to live as normal a life as possible. G?l's contribution, of course, was music, and the CD with this book presents first recordings of the Huyton Suite he wrote for two violins and flute (the only instruments available to him), the satirical review What a Life! composed on the Isle of Man and the piano suite he drew from it. Introductory chapters by G?l's daughter and by Richard Dove present a biographical survey of G?l's life and career and an examination of British internment policy; the Foreword is bythe distinguished economist Sir Alan Peacock, who studied composition with G?l. Together they throw light on one of the more shameful British responses to the threat of Nazi invasion.