Apocalyptic conflict, power politics, magic, the perils of new media, dragons and fake news. This week’s “Berliner Salon” hosted by the German ambassador to the UK and his wife did not lack imagination or ambition. On the stage in the elegant suite of reception rooms overlooking London’s Belgrave Square were the author Daniel Kehlmann, whose latest novel Tyll plays out during the Thirty Years’ War, in discussion with the novelist Ian McEwan. Surveying the audience of over 200, including a fair smattering of luminaries of cultural and intellectual London, Mr McEwan wondered whether similar gatherings were to be found at the British embassy in Berlin.
The timing for such a smart act of cultural diplomacy was good. There was talk of the similarities between the turmoil that engulfed 17th-century Europe and the present. The event took place at the start of week one of Brexit. With the UK severing its links with the EU, the focus shifts to developing or rediscovering new relationships across the Channel.
The salon belonged to a series of events that in various ways point to an attempt to craft a new chapter in Anglo-German relations — not always the smoothest of affairs. The week kicked off with a call from the heads of the UK and German parliamentary foreign affairs committees, Tom Tugendhat and Norbert Röttgen, for a bilateral “friendship treaty”. This would span culture, education and foreign affairs, drawing on “shared values” and a pragmatic realisation that Brexit, which both opposed, is now a reality to be addressed.