Following the success of his Booker Prize-longlisted novel Winnie and Wolf, a fictional account of the relationship between Hitler and the British-born wife of Siegfried Wagner, the composer's son, A N Wilson has decided to publish a short biography of the German dictator. As writers of historical fiction do, he read a handful of English-language biographies and histories for his novel (he doesn't appear to understand German) but he has added little or no further reading for this biography. What might do as background research for a novel won't do as preparation for a serious work of history. Nor does he seem to have thought very hard or taken much care over what little reading he has done.
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