The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.

Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.

My guest this week is the writer, editor, critic, academic and a spectator alumnus,

former foreign editor in Baruma, whose new book is The Collaborators,

Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II.

Now, if I can start by asking an obvious question,

a lot of stories of deception and survival in World War II.

What was it that made you choose these three?

And who are they? Well, I knew about two of them, actually all three of them. I've known about

them for quite a long time. One is very, very well known in Holland, I mean a notorious figure,

who was the Hasidic conman, vine-reb. The other one is equally legendary, Kawashima Yoshiko,

legendary in China and even more so in Japan.

So I knew her story and there are films about her and novels and so on.

And Himmler's Massa I knew about because, I mean,

he's another famous, well-known figure.

In fact, Woody Harrelson is making a movie about him at the moment, playing him as a hero, not as a fraud.

And I knew about him because Hugh Trevor Roper, the historian, put me on to him years ago.

And so they were colorful characters.

And I've always been interested.

This is Felix Kirsten. Felix Kirsten. And I've always been interested. This is Felix Kirsten.

Felix Kirsten. And I've always been interested in the question of collaboration because when I grew up in

Holland, which had been occupied by the Nazis, of course, we really still grew up in the 50s and 60s with a very

...