Elizabeth Shaw’s (1920-1992) memoir How I Came to Berlin: An Artist’s Journey from Belfast and the London Blitz to a Cold-War City, which has just been published in English for the first time by Lilliput Press in Dublin, is a unique and substantial contribution to autobiographical writing and to Irish migrant literature.  The text brings us on a life journey that traverses Ireland, Britain and the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) – better-know in Ireland as communist East Germany. It engages with Irish nationalism, Ulster Protestantism, internationalist communism, radical art, newspaper caricatures, children’s writing, the cities of Belfast, London and…

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