Available for the first time in English, a moving prison correspondence between a husband and wife who resisted the Nazis. Tegel prison, Berlin, in the fall of 1944. Helmuth James von Moltke is awaiting trial for his leading role in the Kreisau Circle, one of the most important German resistance groups against the Nazis. By a near miracle, the prison chaplain at Tegel is Harald Poelchau, a friend and coconspirator of Helmuth and his wife, Freya. From Helmuth’s arrival at Tegel in late September 1944 until the day of his execution by the Nazis on January 23, 1945, Poelchau would carry Helmuth’s and Freya’s letters in and out of prison daily, risking his own life. Freya would safeguard these letters for the rest of her long life. Last Letters is a profoundly personal record of the couple’s fortitude in the face of fascism.

F RE Y A LETTERS FROM SYRIA JOHN MURRAY ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON, W. --- - First Edition Printed in Great Britain by Wyman Sons, Ltd., London, Fdkenham and Reading CONTENTS PACE i. FROM VENICE TO BEIRUT. LETTERS 112 j In the first of these letters Freya Stark has left her home at Asolo and has set out from Venice on a small cargo vessel for her first journey east of Italy and her first contact with the Near East. The s. s. Abbazia takes her as far as Rhodes, where she spends a few days before proceeding on s. s Diana to Beirut, The whole passage occupies three weeks. In the course of it she describes her first impressions of many famous places. 2. LEARNING ARABIC AT BRUMANA. LETTERS 13 63 23 The writer of these letters is now to spend three cold winter months at Brumana, a Syrian village on a slope of the Lebanon high above Beirut. She went with a recom mendation from the well-known orientalist Sir Thomas Arnold, and her object in settling there was to gain a command of fiuent Arabic. She had already received a grounding in this difficult tongue, first from an old Franciscan missionary friar at San Remo, then in 1926 from an Egyptian teacher in London, and finally in 1327 at the School of Oriental Studies. 3. FIRST VISIT TO DAMASCUS. LETTERS 6489 87 Telling of a month at Damascus, where the writer stayed in a native household in the Moslem quarter, and was much hampered by ill-health due to insanitary conditions. After three weeks convalescence in Brwnana she is joined by her friend Venetia Buddicom, whose acquaintance the reader has already made in the course of this correspondence. DAMASCUS AND THENCE TO LETTERS go 1 08 127 friends go by car to Baalbek and Damascus. Their nextexpedition is an unconventional and adventurous one, seeing that the Druse revolt of August, 1925, had continued until March, 1927, and that the French rulers of Syria were far from welcoming intruders. They are mounted on donkeys and with a Druse guide called Najm make a leisurely progress towards Palestine. At the end of eleven days they are at Bosra. There they dismiss their guide and take a car for Jericho and Jerusalem. 5. POSTSCRIPTS FROM ASOLO AND BRUMANA. LETTERS 109 in i 9 These letters re-introduce some persons and places already familiar to the reader, who will perhaps discern in the last sentence of all a link with the opening chapter of Baghdad Sketches. VI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS From photographs by Miss Venetia Buddicom, except Frontispiece and those otherwise marked Freya Stark Frontispiece at end of book 1. Lindos, Rhodes Marine Photo Service, Colchester 2. Coastal hills of Syria 1 3. Asphodels over Syrian ruins 4. Flocks of the Beduin 4. Hawking in Syrian cornfields 5. Cutting the corn 6. Roman ruins at Baalbek 7. Great Mosque, Damascus Photo. P. 0. 8. In a Damascus bazaar 9. A cobbler at Damascus 10. Escort first seen 1 1 . Freya Stark, Najm and Arif 1 2. Groups at Deir All 13. Stone doors at Burdk 14. Freya Stark and Arifby the well at Redeme 14. Inside the guest room at Redeme vii 15. Beduin girl dancing near Shahba 15. Coffeepots 1 6 School children at Redeme 17. Miss Buddicom and French officers at Shahba 18. Circular temple at Kanawat 1 8. Little theatre in the ravine ig. Ruins at Kanawat 20. Ruins t Kanawat 20. Temple ruins below Sir 2 1 . The castle guard at Bosra 21. Children in gateway at Atyl 22. Mutib and his grandchildren at Resas 22. Making butter at Resas23. MufiVs tent at Resas 23. Ruined mosque and minaret at Salhad 24. Bosra From photographs by the author Sketch map drawn by H. W. Hawes xi Vlll FOREWORD THESE letters, written on my first coming to Asia, were neatly and dreamlessly at rest in Sir John Murrays cup board when, between one blitz and another, the Pub lishers eye fell upon them. They were asked for and obtained the dislocation of war between me and the printer made the sending 6f proofs impracticable Sir Sydney Cockerell has most kindly edited them and seen them through the Press...

A profound, powerful and moving collection of 100 letters from around the world responding to the climate crisis, introduced by Emma Thompson and lovingly illustrated by CILIP award winner Jackie Morris. ‘All power to this amazing project.’ JOANNE HARRIS ‘Makes sense of the climate crisis in a whole new way’ MAGID MAGID

Memories of Kreisau and the German Resistance is the personal account of Freya von Moltke, a member of the Kreisau Circle, a German resistance group that participated in the attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944. Freya?s husband, Helmuth von Moltke, was a cofounder of the circle and was executed after the failed assassination attempt. ø Freya recounts both personal details and sweeping historical events. She describes the resistance work carried out during the meetings of the circle as well as the last days of Kreisau, after many of the members of the resistance were executed for their roles in the failed assassination attempt. When the war ended in 1945, Freya was evacuated from Kreisau, and the von Moltke estate was given to Poland.

A Good Morning America Buzz Pick A Library Reads Pick June Jones emerges from her shell to fight for her beloved local library, and through the efforts and support of an eclectic group of library patrons, she discovers life-changing friendships along the way. Lonely librarian June Jones has never left the sleepy English village where she grew up. Shy and reclusive, the thirty-year-old would rather spend her time buried in books than venture out into the world. But when her library is threatened with closure, June is forced to emerge from behind the shelves to save the heart of her community and the place that holds the dearest memories of her mother. Joining a band of eccentric yet dedicated locals in a campaign to keep the library, June opens herself up to other people for the first time since her mother died. It just so happens that her old school friend Alex Chen is back in town and willing to lend a helping hand. The kindhearted lawyer's feelings for her are obvious to everyone but June, who won't believe that anyone could ever care for her in that way. To save the place and the books that mean so much to her, June must finally make some changes to her life. For once, she's determined not to go down without a fight. And maybe, in fighting for her cherished library, June can save herself, too.

“Helmut James von Moltke [1907-1945] pursued two related goals during the Second World War: to help victims of National Socialism and to prepare for post-National Socialist Germany and Europe. He worked toward the first goal as a specialist in international law in the army’s intelligence department. There he struggled to uphold principles of international law against Nazi policies of racism and aggression. To achieve the second goal, Moltke initiated what later became known as the Kreisau Circle, a group that discussed and drafted plans to rebuild and reorganize Germany after Hitler’s defeat. By birth and character Moltke was particularly well suited for his self-appointed tasks. He succeeded in his work for the army not only because of his exceptional abilities but also because of his name, which bestowed a degree of privilege and immunity. On his father’s side, he was a grandnephew of the famous Prussian field marshal, whose Silesian estate, Kreisau, he inherited. Through his mother, he was the grandson of Sir James Rose Innes, the liberal South African judge. Partly through him, Moltke developed a strong sense of social justice and a cosmopolitanism rare among the Junkers. As an aristocrat and a devout Christian, as an internationalist with socialist sympathies, Moltke won collaborators for the Kreisau Circle in the army, the bureaucracy, the Catholic and Protestant churches, and the trade unions... Moltke was arrested in January 1944 and sentenced to death a year later, while most of his associates were convicted in the trials following the attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944. This biography shows that Moltke not only distinguished between good and evil but, more important, felt a moral imperative to combat evil. His human greatness resulted from this combination of insight and action.” — Erich Hahn, The Journal of Modern History “This book owes much to the nature of [Helmuth and Freya von Moltke’s] relationship and the frequency of the letters, and to the fact that Michael Balfour and Julian Frisby, the English friends of Moltke’s, were able to use them to quote from them extensively. In these letters the man comes alive, though the book as a whole has the merit of putting them in their biographical and historical context.” — Beate Ruhm von Oppen, The New York Times “[An] excellent and moving book... an important contribution to our knowledge of the German resistance to Hitler... For the casual reader who wants to learn how a decent and able man reacted in a situation of brutality and horror, [Balfour and Frisby] have presented an engrossing story. For fellow historians they have made available a set of indispensable documents.” — Gordon R. Mork, History “The authors of this book have had access not only to the [Kreisau] Circle’s hopeful thoughts about the future shape of Germany, but also to Moltke’s revealing and voluminous letters to his wife, who survived him. This material has been admirably employed to construct a biography in the best historical tradition: that is, one which not only brings to life the central figure, but throws abundant light upon the times in which he lived... Moltke raised his own memorial. He has been fortunate in the two biographers who in this book have delineated and interpreted it.” — R. Cecil, International Affairs “This is an important addition to the growing literature on the German Resistance movement.” — Robert E. Neil, The American Historical Review “This new biography is written with real affection by two close personal friends of Moltke... provides a more personal angle, above all by the numerous quotations from Moltke’s letters to his wife which miraculously survived the war... gives us a fascinating picture of the problems any German opposition to Hitler had to face.” — F. L. Carsten, The Slavonic and East European Review “This is Helmuth von Moltke’s story, told by two of the many friends he made in England before the war years. The drama of the story sustains the narrative... Helmuth’s letter to his wife, written the day before his execution, is worth many times the price of the book.” — Worldview

A wealthy family tries--and fails--to seal themselves off from the chaos of post-World War II life surrounding them in this stunning novel by one of Germany's most important post-war writers. In East Prussia, January 1945, the German forces are in retreat and the Red Army is approaching. The von Globig family's manor house, the Georgenhof, is falling into disrepair. Auntie runs the estate as best she can since Eberhard von Globig, a special officer in the German army, went to war, leaving behind his beautiful but vague wife, Katharina, and her bookish twelve-year-old son, Peter. As the road fills with Germans fleeing the occupied territories, the Georgenhof begins to receive strange visitors--a Nazi violinist, a dissident painter, a Baltic baron, even a Jewish refugee. Yet in the main, life continues as banal, wondrous, and complicit as ever for the family, until their caution, their hedged bets, and their denial are answered by the wholly expected events they haven't allowed themselves to imagine. All for Nothing, published in 2006, was the last novel by Walter Kempowski, one of postwar Germany's most acclaimed and popular writers.

A selection of letters, including several previously unpublished, written by Freya Stark on her famous journeys. She often travelled to places alone as no other European woman had done and tells of events that are now of historical interest such as the rise of Mussolini, and the First World War.

'The first time I read Freya’s work I thought . . . uh oh. And then I thought, you have got to be kidding me. And then I thought, God fucking dammit. And then I walked around the house shaking my head thinking . . . OK – alright. And then – finally – I thought, well well well – like a smug policeman. Listen – she’s just the best. I’m going to say this so seriously. She is, unfortunately, the absolute best. Trying to write a clever blurb for her feels like an insult to how right and true and deadly this collection is. God, she’s just so good. She’s the best. She kills me always, every time, and forever.’ —Hera Lindsay Bird