The Diary That Changed the World

To build up a future, you have to know the past. Otto Frank, 1967

In late 1940s Amsterdam, when Otto Frank unwrapped his daughter Anne's diary with trembling hands and began to read the first pages, he discovered a side to his daughter that was as much a revelation to him as it would be to the rest of the world. He did not know that he was about to create an icon at the heart of a debate about twentieth-century history—with themes about growing up, persecution, human values, and religion that are still contested today.

Nor did he realise that publication would spark a bitter battle that would embroil him in years of legal contest and eventually drive him to a nervous breakdown and exile. Today, more than seventy-five years after Anne's death, the diary is at the centre of a multi-million-pound industry, with competing foundations, cultural critics, and former friends and relatives fighting for the right to control it.

This book goes beyond conventional biographies to examine the story of The Diary of Anne Frank, the highly controversial part it played in twentieth-century history and the publishing world, and the fundamental role it has played in our understanding of the Holocaust. At the same time, it sheds new light on the life and character of Otto Frank, the complex, driven, and deeply human figure who lived in the shadows of the terrible events that robbed him of his family, while he painstakingly crafted and controlled his daughter's story.