Becoming Kathrine Talbot

Ilse Gross is fourteen and all alone when she flees Nazi Germany. Her family stays behind. Arriving in the UK, she finds work as a maid, but longs to be a writer. And seven years after the end of the war, she gets her breakthrough as an English-language novelist. Her pen name: Kathrine Talbot.

Like the Queen tells the true story of an almost perfect assimilation. We accompany Ilse’s escape to the UK and her deportation to a camp for »enemy aliens«, experience her hunger and her freedom and her fleeting success on the 1950s book market. This is a book about creativity, gender roles, failure, and friendship - and about a former refugee who bears an uncanny resemblance to her new monarch.

This previously untold story of a once-successful writer will surprise and delight international, especially British readers. Like the Queen journeys from London to the Isle of Man, from Cornwall to New York, and then back to a hillside in Sussex. At its centre, however, is the story of a German-Jewish family. Throughout her life, Kathrine Talbot struggles to turn her memories into literature. When she finally succeeds, it’s almost too late.

»Ilse was many people.« Lea Haller, NZZ Geschichte

»[The] astounding story of an author.« Frank Meyer, Deutschlandfunk Kultur