My friend the enemy

the long version

On a visit to Germany in 1934, Nora Briscoe became captivated by National Socialism, so much so that two years later she entrusted her six-year-old son Paul to a German foster family. When war was declared in September 1939, Paul was left stranded in an alien country, while his mother became a Nazi spy operating out of the British Ministry of Supply.In this compelling and deeply moving memoir of war and childhood, Paul Briscoe recalls his harrowing experiences in Nazi Germany, including a raid on a synagogue with his fellow members of the Hitler Youth, and becoming a poster boy for National Socialism in one of the Party's propaganda films. On his return to England in 1945 - leaving behind the German family he had grown to love - he was confronted with a mother he did not recognise in a country whose language he could no longer speak. And he learned that his mother had been imprisoned for treason after an intricate M15 sting.