Typhus

The saga of the rise and fall of the Third Reich could be traced by following events in any one of the countries occupied by the Nazis. Jane Rogoyska has refined this approach by focusing on what happened in a single building, a fashionable ‘grand hotel’ in central Paris, between 1933 and 1945.  The Lutetia is the only luxury hotel in Paris on the Left Bank, where it has always looked out of place – its bulbous, domed grandeur dominating less pretentious neighbours in a district that is still better known for its cultural and academic traditions. Rogoyska tells the story of the building’s wartime adventures in three parts –

Death’s great paradox is its inconstant constancy. Its forms and rituals change from generation to generation. In our own era, antibiotics have reduced the chance of a fatal infection, and average life expectancy has risen to our eighties. Direct cremation means we can even ship Auntie Maudie, when her time comes, to the crematorium sight unseen and have her ashes returned via DHL. Our existential encounter with death in society is muted to a murmur. Unlike the Irish and their open-coffin wakes, the English almost never now see a corpse. So it is hard to imagine how our great-great-grandparents lived in a world where fatal fevers struck at random and