Changes

While the Nazi political regime did not seem so threatening in its early years, by 1930 the shape of things to come was increasingly ominous. Posters with slogans like 'The Jews are in league with the Devil' appeared in public, and on houses where Jews were known to live. The Friends of the Pevsners had the Manchester Guardian sent to them every day, but eventually the delivery became erratic – if it came at all – and when they did receive it, the pages were heavily censored in black ink. At length he realized that his position and that of his family at home was untenable, so he took a crash course in learning to speak English fluently, something which surprisingly he had not done at school, and reluctantly made the decision to leave his country and settle in Britain. From a German perspective, he noted, 'England looked like an academic wasteland' with a misguided sense of its own importance, and terrible food. Despite these disadvantages, it became the wisest move he ever made, and at length he established himself as a leading figure in artistic and architectural scholarship in his adopted country, although this stage of his career is beyond the scope of this book.