Barbed Wire University - The Untold Story of the Interned Jewish Intellectuals Who Turned an Island Prison into the Most Rema

Barbed Wire University tells the extraordinary tale of Winston Churchill-s internment of some of the most gifted Jewish refugee writers, professors, artists and painters of their generation in a camp on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. These were men who had fled Hitler-s Germany, found refuge in Britain and then in the hysteria of 1940 were held in captivity as a perceived security threat. They turned the camp-Camp Hutchinson-into a school, concert hall and artistic community.

Using memoirs and diaries, some of which have only recently become available in archives, Dave Hannigan pieces together a richly detailed account of what these remarkable men did during their time in captivity. This is a forgotten corner of World War II and the way these men constructed a Bohemian idyll in the middle of the Irish Sea, their freedom taken from them, is an extraordinary tale of grit and creativity.