Mr Norris Changes Trains: Christopher Isherwood (Vintage classics)

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In addition to his business interests, Norris also has links with the Communist Party, an activity that brings Bradshaw into contact with one of the movers and shakers in the group, a certain Ludwig Bayer. I believe that this novel gives a clear, and perhaps alternative view to most, of what the German population really thought and felt towards Hitler and fascism.

He is Chairman and Lead for Clinical Governance and Patient Safety at Queen Mary’s Hospital Sidcup as part of Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust elective services. This is an entertaining romp which vividly portrays the decadence and growing political tensions - and, as the story progresses, growing intolerance and persecution - in early 1930s Berlin. Isherwood plays with Bradshaw’s youthful detachment in contrast to the very serious, and sometimes violent, political backdrop playing out around him. Our street looked quite gay when you turned into it and saw the black-white-red flags hanging motionless from windows against the blue spring sky. It’s really the humorous observations and characterisations that were the highlight of the book for me.Not to do so meant that "The Narrator would have become so odd, so interesting, that his presence would have thrown the novel out of perspective.

Alongside Bradshaw and Norris, the novel also features a cast of colourful characters, all of whom are drawn with great care and attention to detail: there is Mr Norris’ menacing secretary, Schmidt, a thug and a bully, a man who seems to show scant regard for his employer at the best of times; there is Baron von Pregnitz (known to his friends as ‘Kuno’), a man with a penchant for boys’ own adventure stories; and finally there is Bradshaw’s landlady, Frl.

I had such a good time with this novel, and I really hope you enjoy it too – it strikes me as being right up your street. Ultimately, Mr Norris is a portrait of pre-war Berlin, a story that is by turns charming, witty and tragic. The second is the better known "Goodbye to Berlin" the basis of Cabaret and Lisa Minnelli’s stardom.