"Among the 70,000 refugees from Nazi Germany who had entered Britain by 1939 were some of the leading literary personalities of the Weimar era. This book tells the stories of five emigre writers, two Austrian, three German - the Austrian and internationally known novelist Stefan Zweig, the leading Berlin theatre critic and essyist Alfred Kerr, the writer and poet Max Herrmann-Neisse, the radical, pacifist journalist Karl Otten, and the Austrian novelist and literary parodist Robert Neumann. All were banned from publishing in Germany from which they fled for their lives. Only Zweig was already known in Britain." "Using unpublished diaries, memoirs, letters and British government records, the author follows the difficult, often dramatic and tragic lives of these men and their families in their efforts to establish themselves in British society."--Jacket.