Having devoured Jonathan Freedland’s The Escape Artist (2022) with fascination, I wasn’t going to miss reading his latest, The Traitors Circle (2025).
The former was a harrowing account of Rudolf Vrba, the eponymous escapee from Auschwitz, and his attempts to testify to the world about the evils being done there. It raised the uncomfortable question: Why did it take the world so long to believe him, and act on it?
The Traitors Circle is animated by a similarly uncomfortable question: What would you have done? We flatter ourselves to think that we might have resisted rather than colluded, participated or condoned, when so few did.
Truth, shame & the search for blame
There was a stream of articles and commentary in the weeks leading up to Jason Arday’s resignation as Professor of …