Uwe Neumahr’s The Writers’ Castle, translated by Jefferson Chase, is about the reporting of the Nuremberg war crimes trial in 1945-6. The title refers to a mock castle outside Nuremberg where most journalists lived and worked when not in the courtroom. (A number who didn’t get in wrote as if they had been present.) Rebecca West for The New Yorker had an affair with one of the court judges, an unpleasant American called Francis Biddle, and spent much of her time in his well-appointed villa.
The book is an indirect account of the Nuremberg trials through chapters on the more famous correspondents. The trials were the first of their kind and media outlets sent their most celebrated writers: individuals of the calibre of John Dos Passos, Martha Gellhorn, Erich Kästner and West. Cartoonists were there too, including this paper’s celebrated David Low.
