Clever, persuasive, compelling . . .The portrayal of Walter Benjamin is masterly.'Allan Massie, ScotsmanFor a brief moment in 1940, a young Spanish militant and a reclusive German Jewish scholar are thrown together. Both men have fled Fascist persecution in their homeland. But until the day their paths converge, on a remote mountain pass, their experiences of war have been vastly different.Based on the events of Walter Benjamin's life, and stretching from Paris's Left Bank to the prison camps of southern France, The Angel of History tells an unforgettable story about a watershed moment of the twentieth century.'One can almost hear the boots on the pavement, the tanks lumbering towards the French border, as Benjamin idles in smoky cafés over a volume of poetry.'Guardian