The RAG Club Member Events – Lunch with Keith Lowe
November 5 @ 12:30 - 15:00
Tuesday 5th November at 12.30 | Library | £65.00*
*Includes one glass Wine on arrival, two course Lunch with Coffee, and two glasses wine with the meal
During the Second World War, Naples was a city of major strategic value in the Mediterranean. Throughout the period of German occupation from 1940 to 1943, a grip initially loosened by a four-day local uprising, the allies heavily bombed the site. Then when liberated in October by armoured patrols of the King’s Dragoon Guards and Royal Scots Greys (along with America’s 2nd Airborne Division) after the native insurgence, the story of which became a film, the Luftwaffe’s worst rained down on the liberators and locals. Naples ultimately paid a heavy price for being on the Winter Lines that were central to the German strategy for holding on to Italy.
Keith Lowe is a greatly respected military historian who is an acclaimed chronicler of the Second World War and aftermath. His latest book, “Naples, 1944”, considers the challenges the city faced during the war and thereafter. The allies arrived at a city in turmoil which presented obstacles to restoring normal life, over and above continuing efforts to contest fascism.
Join Keith for lunch and a shared conversation at the table about this nuance of the Second World War and the wider issues of almost siege-states that some cities had to endure. Also the strategy of relentless bombing with the author having written a book on the experiences of Hamburg, which came under sustained attack in the year of Naples’ liberation, costing the city 45,000 lives and living 38,000 with injuries.
This is a lunch which will look at war, approaches to war, and the consequences of war in the company of an expert in all those fields who will both share his thoughts and answer questions from members and guests in attendance. Also a lunch to celebrate the citizens of Naples who bravely paved the way for allies of equal fortitude.
