'History is, above all, an exercise in imagination,' Mazower tells Kathimerini

"I was in the bookshop the other day and I saw your book and realized that you must be the son of Bill Mazower, who was my first boyfriend in Minehead, Somerset in 1941," declares one of several letters Mark Mazower has received since the publication last year of his book "What You Did Not Tell."

The writer of that letter was 14 years old in 1941 and the distinguished British historian's father was 16. It was World War II and, like thousands of other Londoners, he had been evacuated from the city to the countryside, where the romance occurred.

The book must have given the reader incredible insight into Bill's family history - about his father Max and the active role he played in the Russian Revolution, about his emigration to Britain and how he started his family, but also about Bill's half-brother, about his unreachable utopias, his dreams and defeats, and his...

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