Hello my name is David Ronserman and this is Talking Politics. On this podcast we often find

ourselves saying we need to wait to see what happens in Italy before we know where Europe

is heading so Italy has now voted and God knows what it means but we're here to try

and make some sense of it and we're going to talk about Germany too.

Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books, Europe's

Leading Magazine of Books and Ideas. We've already had some LRB writers on this podcast

and we'll have some more soon. There's a reading list of pieces to accompany the podcast

at lrb.co.uk forward slash talking along with a special subscription offer for Talking

Politics listeners. 12 issues of fearless, expansive, elegant writing for just £12.

It is a great pleasure as always to welcome back Chris Clark to this podcast. I had some

I had a bit of food diced into some goat's milk kefir. You didn't know. Chris is a historian

of Germany among many other things and we're probably going to start with Germany. We also

have Chris Bickerton. After long negotiations we've moved on from sort of porridge to porridge

with milk to fruit and fibre and Helen Thompson who knows about everything. You don't like

you. Do you want me to say something else? Yes. I like saying that. That's what people think.

Oh, go on. I've got worse things to do with it than that at the moment. It's true that

someone I know did say exactly that about you. She's fantastical also. It is the thing.

You just have to know that is your calling card. So let's start with Germany not I think

because it's simpler but at least it's the story is further along in that it's taken

about five months I think to form a government and it may take that I mean who knows how

long it's going to take in Italy. But we do at least now know and we talked Chris about

this before when things were much more up in the air we talked actually before the election

...