David Laws – författare

Conflict, Improvisation, Governance presents a carefully crafted and edited collection of first hand accounts of diverse public sector and non-profit urban practitioners facing the practical challenges of "doing democracy" in the global/local context of the interconnected major European city of Amsterdam and its region. The book examines street level democratic processes through the experiences of planning and city governance practitioners in community development, youth work, public service delivery, urban public administration, immigration and multi-cultural social policy. These profiles and case studies show widely shared challenges in global and local urban environments, and new, "bottom-up," democratic and improvisational strategies that community members and public officials alike can use to make more inclusive, democratic cities.

Conflict, Improvisation, Governance presents a carefully crafted and edited collection of first hand accounts of diverse public sector and non-profit urban practitioners facing the practical challenges of "doing democracy" in the global/local context of the interconnected major European city of Amsterdam and its region. The book examines street level democratic processes through the experiences of planning and city governance practitioners in community development, youth work, public service delivery, urban public administration, immigration and multi-cultural social policy. These profiles and case studies show widely shared challenges in global and local urban environments, and new, "bottom-up," democratic and improvisational strategies that community members and public officials alike can use to make more inclusive, democratic cities.

MUNICH 1938

Two men successfully gatecrash the closed conference at Munich as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is about to sign an agreement giving Adolf Hitler everything he wants in Czechoslovakia.

One of the men is an American radio correspondent aghast at Chamberlain’s gullibility at surrendering to Nazi demands. He’s determined to stop the deal by bursting into the conference with a telling protest.

As he makes a loud declaration to the assembled national leaders – Chamberlain, Daladier, Mussolini and Hitler - his Czech partner pulls a gun

BRITAIN 2015

Emma Drake, a history researcher at Cambridge, has never believed that her grandfather simply disappeared without a trace. The infamous Munich agreement was signed; Chamberlain returned home a short-lived hero; Hitler emerged all-powerful to wage his war and her grandfather vanished from the pages of history. The Munich police reportedly searched for him but found nothing.

For the family of Bradley C Wilkes, this appeared to be the end of the story. But on the 70th anniversary of Wilkes’s radio station, Emma is chosen to lead a conference to reassess the significance of the events in Munich.

Hungry for success, Emma can now reopen the mystery of her missing grandfather - but there are obstacles in her way: rebuffed by powerful relatives, beset by an arms dealing conspiracy and hit by an Intelligence “sting”, she’s almost won…until her trail takes her in an unexpected direction, to a forest 50 miles west of Auschwitz to trace partisan action against Hitler’s Final solution.