Asian Studies
Contemporary Spanish Studies
Critical Inventions
Demographic Developments
First Nations & Colonial Encounter
Latin American Studies
Peace Politics in the Middle East
Religious Beliefs & Practices
Spanish History
Spirituality in Education

Outsider Inside
Volume III of the Hartland Trilogy

Charles Hannam
Charles Hannam was born in Essen, Germany, in 1925, and educated at the Goethe Gymnasium until forbidden to attend. He arrived in the UK with the ‘Kindertransport’ in May 1939. After serving in India and Burma, he taught in a preparatory school before reading History at Cambridge. He is the author of well-received books on teacher training and mental handicap, and taught at Lincoln and Manchester. He was Senior Lecturer in Education at Bristol University, before retirement.

“A beguiling blend of satire on the private school system, more serious than Evelyn Waugh, more radical social-critical insights about the post-war world, reminiscent of Orwell.” Edward Timms, Research Professor in German Studies and Director of the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex

From reviews of the first two volumes: “One of the most exact accounts of early adolescence yet written, so unsentimental and precise that a good many men will recognise fragments of themselves at 13!” C. P. Snow in the Financial Times

“The way he transposes casual circumstances, like holiday encounters, into the felt life of history, makes this a remarkably vivid account of all growing up.” Margaret Meek in the Times Literary Supplement

Like all refugees, Karl Hartland [Hannam] carried within himself his ‘hidden identity’ as a child refugee from Germany escaping the Holocaust, in which most of his family perished. Life experiences in the British Army, at Cambridge, and later returning to post-war Germany, brought with them conflict in terms of his sense of being an ‘Englishman’ in contrast to his upper-class German-Jewish early upbringing. After experiencing the British class system in India and Burma, and coping with the Army’s inherent virulent racism, post-war academic success introduced him to the other side of the class divide – first as a teacher at a ‘posh’ prep school, and later studying at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
… In this final volume of his biography trilogy (previous volumes: A Boy in Your Situation; Almost an Englishman, André Deutsch), Charles Hannam provides a telling account of the long-term effects of the refugee experience – and what made him an ‘Outsider’. It is compelling reading, especially for those who have experienced the wrench between cultures as part of the adjustment process of being forced to accommodate new values and behaviour as a refugee.

Publication Details