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2 E d i t o r i a l at sea/with flaming decoy boats, and side-stepped torpedoes’. The many in the one, the overlapping of lives, the dwindling of the generation, made it possible for him to celebrate not a death but a life at once individual and representative. Had Simon Armitage been an ironist, had he been a little closer to Auden, say, or Larkin, he would have found it hard to make the big, unaffected historical noise that was required. Had he been less in love with England he would not have had the gumption to rise to patriotism. There is something cinematic in the way the poem unfolds, the way the war is evoked: To study their hands at rest was to picture maps showing hachured valleys and indigo streams, schemes of old campaigns and reconnaissance missions. What remains is a specific set of natural images that bind the eulogised with a nature stubbornly English. The poem may be the final poem of the Second World War. It is notable, especially so given how late it comes in (I almost said ‘our’) history. The major oaks in the wood start tuning up and skies to come will deliver their tributes. But for now, a cold April’s closing moments parachute slowly home, so by mid-afternoon snow is recast as seed heads and thistledown. Letter to the Editor Open letter to English Heritage The application for a blue plaque in Hallam Street, Central London, to commemorate Stefan Zweig’s residence in the city from 1933–1939, was turned down in 2012. English Heritage argued then that the Austrian writer’s ‘London connections did not appear strong enough’ and that his ‘profile has never been as high in Britain as elsewhere.’ Even at the time, this puzzled many. Zweig had been made so well-known to a new generation of English readers, mainly through new translations from the Pushkin Press and Hesperus, that his high profile had become a serious irritant in some quarters. The release of ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ also suggests that his reputation is not in decline. He moved into a flat at 11 Portland Place in October 1933 and was there until 1936. Portland Place, we argue, is where the plaque should be. He arrived at a time when his work, like that of other Jewish writers, was being publicly burnt in Germany. It is true he was then less well-known in Britain than on the continent: London offered him the libraries, anonymity and space to think that he wanted. He came originally to complete a book about another great European humanist who had lived and worked happily in England four centuries earlier, Desiderius Erasmus, the ‘first conscious European’, as Zweig called him. Erasmus’ ‘Praise of Folly’ (1509), dedicated to his close friend Thomas More, was written while he was here and addressed Europe just before the Reformation tore it apart into warring factions. Zweig’s ‘Erasmus: Triumph and Tragedy’ (1934) in turn sought to counter a ‘moment of mass intoxication’ with a hope. His was a shared, secular hope in Europe as a community of peoples created not on any imperial or religious model but ‘through gentle convincing.’ ‘Voluntary adhesion and inner freedom’ were to be its ‘fundamental laws.’
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Zweig stayed in the country until 1940 and took British citizenship, writing a novel as well as books about French literature and English, Scottish, Portuguese and Jewish history. His work for PEN continued. He understood himself, in other words, as part of an international, intergenerational, multi-ethnic collective. The long history of European co-operation, he argued, should be taught in schools, as well as that series of wars, who won them and why, about which our children are, to this day, generally better informed. Zweig’s ‘London connections’ included meeting Bernard Shaw, being chosen to read the oration at Sigmund Freud’s funeral, becoming a close friend of his English publisher and also supporting a refugee centre in East London, then crowded with Jewish migrants less fortunate than himself. At a time when the status of refugees has become an acute concern, that this one didn’t know very many people here ought surely not to count against him. To anyone who grew up in the 1980s, school or university exchanges around Europe seemed to prove that co-operation and tolerance had won in the end. Britain’s withdrawal from the Erasmus exchange programme and the apparently deliberate running down of cultural ties to our immediate neighbours is a matter of concern across the political spectrum. Zweig spoke up for ‘a panhuman ideal’ knowing full well that it lacked the ‘elementary attraction which a mettlesome encounter with a foe who lives across a frontier, speaks another language, holds another creed, invariably exercises.’ He understood only too well the relative weakness of European identity as a popular force. Yet he chose 11 Portland Place, at a critical moment in his life and in the history of our continent, as the place to complete his defence of Erasmus and his ‘panhuman ideal’. The undersigned believe that this deserves to be better known and that a blue plaque on or near that address would now be appropriate, yours faithfully, Dame Antonia Byatt, novelist Pardaad Chamsaz, Curator of Germanic Collections, British Library Sam Coombes, Senior Lecturer in French, Edinburgh Dame Margaret Drabble, novelist Jane Draycott, poet, Tutor at Oxford and Lancaster Lord Alfred Dubs, Labour Life peer Sasha Dugdale, poet and translator Adam Freudenheim, managing director, Pushkin Press Rüdiger Görner, Director of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations Lucy Goodison, Editor at Just Press Daniel Gorman, Director, English PEN Grey Gowrie, poet, formerly Conservative minister Sir David Hare, playwright Michael Hofmann, poet and translator Mimi Khalvati, poet and translator Satish Kumar, Emeritus Editor, Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine Karen Leeder, Professor of modern German literature, Oxford Charlie Louth, Fellow in German, Queen’s College, Oxford Arthur MacGregor, formerly Curator at the Ashmolean Mark Mazower, Professor of History, Columbia Horatio Morpurgo, writer Sir Michael & Lady Clare Morpurgo, writer & philanthropist Steven O’Brien, poet, Editor of The London Magazine Stephen Romer, poet, translator, Brasenose College, Oxford Michael Schmidt, literary historian, Editor of PN Review Sir Anthony Seldon, writer and educationalist Jonathan Simons, Editor of Analog Sea Timothy Snyder, Professor of History, Yale Will Stone, poet and translator Robert Vilain, Professor of German, Bristol 3 L e t t e r s

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Zweig stayed in the country until 1940 and took British citizenship, writing a novel as well as books about French literature and English, Scottish, Portuguese and Jewish history. His work for PEN continued. He understood himself, in other words, as part of an international, intergenerational, multi-ethnic collective. The long history of European co-operation, he argued, should be taught in schools, as well as that series of wars, who won them and why, about which our children are, to this day, generally better informed.

Zweig’s ‘London connections’ included meeting Bernard Shaw, being chosen to read the oration at Sigmund Freud’s funeral, becoming a close friend of his English publisher and also supporting a refugee centre in East London, then crowded with Jewish migrants less fortunate than himself. At a time when the status of refugees has become an acute concern, that this one didn’t know very many people here ought surely not to count against him.

To anyone who grew up in the 1980s, school or university exchanges around Europe seemed to prove that co-operation and tolerance had won in the end. Britain’s withdrawal from the Erasmus exchange programme and the apparently deliberate running down of cultural ties to our immediate neighbours is a matter of concern across the political spectrum.

Zweig spoke up for ‘a panhuman ideal’ knowing full well that it lacked the ‘elementary attraction which a mettlesome encounter with a foe who lives across a frontier, speaks another language, holds another creed, invariably exercises.’ He understood only too well the relative weakness of European identity as a popular force.

Yet he chose 11 Portland Place, at a critical moment in his life and in the history of our continent, as the place to complete his defence of Erasmus and his ‘panhuman ideal’. The undersigned believe that this deserves to be better known and that a blue plaque on or near that address would now be appropriate,

yours faithfully,

Dame Antonia Byatt, novelist Pardaad Chamsaz, Curator of Germanic Collections, British Library Sam Coombes, Senior Lecturer in French, Edinburgh Dame Margaret Drabble, novelist Jane Draycott, poet, Tutor at Oxford and Lancaster Lord Alfred Dubs, Labour Life peer Sasha Dugdale, poet and translator Adam Freudenheim, managing director, Pushkin Press Rüdiger Görner, Director of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations Lucy Goodison, Editor at Just Press Daniel Gorman, Director, English PEN Grey Gowrie, poet, formerly Conservative minister Sir David Hare, playwright Michael Hofmann, poet and translator Mimi Khalvati, poet and translator Satish Kumar, Emeritus Editor, Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine Karen Leeder, Professor of modern German literature, Oxford Charlie Louth, Fellow in German, Queen’s College, Oxford Arthur MacGregor, formerly Curator at the Ashmolean Mark Mazower, Professor of History, Columbia Horatio Morpurgo, writer Sir Michael & Lady Clare Morpurgo, writer & philanthropist Steven O’Brien, poet, Editor of The London Magazine Stephen Romer, poet, translator, Brasenose College, Oxford Michael Schmidt, literary historian, Editor of PN Review Sir Anthony Seldon, writer and educationalist Jonathan Simons, Editor of Analog Sea Timothy Snyder, Professor of History, Yale Will Stone, poet and translator Robert Vilain, Professor of German, Bristol

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