Patricia Clough

Patricia Clough is a former foreign correspondent for leading British newspapers who has become a successful author in Germany. Her two latest books are "Aachen-Berlin-Königsberg. Eine Zeitreise entlang der alten Reichsstrasse 1" (DVA) which came out in January 2007 and "Gebrauchsanweisung für Umbrien", to be published by Piper Verlag in September 2007. In "Aachen-Berlin-Konigsberg" she follows what used to be the longest and most important East-West route across Germany, from the border with the Netherlands near Aachen to what used to be the border with Lithuania. Along the way she picks up events from the past, human destinies - both famous and unknown - and local curiosities and weaves them into a skein of German history leading from the Germanic tribes to the present day. "Gebrauchsanweisung für Umbrien" is a loving, often humorous and not uncritical portrait of Umbria, where she lives, its traditions, its idiosyncrasies, its food, its history, nature, politics and people.

The two books follow on the success of "In langer Reihe über das Haff - Die Flucht der Trakehner aus Ostpreussen" (DVA 2004) which was reprinted by Bertelsmann Book Club that year and published as a paperback by dtv in 2006. In it she tells the story of the flight for survival of the Trakehners, the world-famous breed of horses, from their home in former East Prussia in the path of the advancing Red Army in the bitter winter of 1945. Equally successful was her biography of Hannelore Kohl, the wife of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who took her own life in 2001, her much-praised biography of Kohl himself and her witty introduction to the English cuisine in "English Cooking - ein Vorurteil wird widerlegt".