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[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->
{{newreview
|author= Catherine Hewitt
|title= The Mistress of Paris
|rating= 4
|genre= Biography
|summary= Born into poverty, no-one could have guessed that the girl who would one day be known as Valtesse de la Bigne would have achieved greatness. This is the tale of her rise to wealth and power – starting in a dress shop as a thirteen year old, but fast becoming a courtesan who would be fought over by some of the greatest men of her time. A woman who kept an air of mystery about many details of her life, Catherine Hewitt nevertheless paints an incredible story around the gaps, and this proves to be both a full and intriguing biography, and a fascinating portrait of the time period.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848319266</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author= Mary Beard
|summary=I'm sure someone somewhere has rewritten The Devil's Dictionary to include the following – ''family: noun; place where the greatest secrets are kept''. The Niemann family is no exception. It was long known that grandfather Karl was in Germany during the Second World War, people could easily work that out from the family biography. Yet little was spoken of, apart from him being an office-bound worker, either in logistics or finance. Since the War two of three surviving siblings had relocated to the Glasgow environs, and there was even a family quip concerning Goebbels and Gorbals (''family: noun; place where the worst things are spoken in the best way''). What was a surprise to our author, and many of his relatives, was that things were a lot closer to the former than had been expected, for Karl was such an office worker – for the SS. With a lot of family history finally out of the closet of silent mouths, and with incriminating photographic evidence revealed in unlikely ways, the whole truth can be known. But this is certainly not just of interest to that one small family.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780722222</amazonuk>
}}
