As I write this, in front of me sits the German Reich and Prussian State Gazette of August 28, 1939. It contains a list, running to two pages, of Germans living abroad who are being stripped of their citizenship because they are deemed to have harmed the Reich. My mother, who was six at the time and therefore capable of inflicting only limited damage upon the Reich, was on the list with her parents and sisters. They were living abroad because they had been forced to flee.
By the time they became British citizens, my mum and dad had, between them, lived in eight different countries.
It’s worth recalling what is, after all, this piece of relatively recent history when discussing the controversy over the