One of the best war stories you'll read this year, this compelling narrative begins in London in 1995. An elderly woman visits a West End art gallery and what happens there unlocks an avalanche of harrowing memories of the holocaust. For the protagonist Marriane Bromberg, this forces a confrontation with long forgotten nightmares. The survivor's claim for her birthright, a Picasso portrait. To secure it, she has to travel back into the heart of darkness that was Belsen and Auschwitz. Pe…

Proposals by the politician Matteo Salvini to conduct a census to create a register of Roma people in Italy reminds one of events that took place in many parts of Europe during the second World War. It led to terrible tragedy, especially to those among the Jewish community, and it understandably stirs up very uncomfortable feelings for people who choose to remember that era.

The last time registers were kept and acted upon in Italy, the Pope and others in authority looked the other way but c…

When we first visit the Chiesa di Santa Maria we're in the company of Molly Cavendish who is a part-time guide at the Museo di Santa Maria, which is what the ruins of the Chiesa - a chapel - have now become. Crowds flock to see its centre piece, a renaissance fresco with a history which grabs the attention of young and old. Molly uses the history to entertain the tourists, but there's more too it than she knows, particularly as the history of the building is also the history of the Vann…