READER'S DIGEST RECOMMENDED READ: Festive Traditions

The origin of the famous Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is beautifully drawn in this historical read

- Stephenie Meyer

EVERY DECEMBER, Trafalgar Square is famously dominated by a Christmas tree donated by Norway in gratitude for Britain’s help during the war. Indeed, it’s become such a familiar sight that the poignant and stirring story behind it is often forgotten. Now, the ever-prolific A N Wilson’s latest book—aimed at “young and old alike”—gives that story its full due.

He begins on the night of April 8-9, 1940 when Germany launched a surprise invasion of neutral Norway, firmly expecting that it would do the same as other invaded countries: agree to terms that gave the Nazis full control. Things didn’t, however, work out that way. King Haakon VII and the Norwegian government managed to escape to Britain (Haakon’s English wife Maud was George VI’s aunt). They took with them not just Norway’s gold reserves to fund anti-German resistance but, as Wilson puts it, the idea of Norway itself. Their country’s merchant navy helped keep the Allies fed during the Battle of the Atlantic. Norwegian commandos fought on too—most spectacularly by destroying a heavy water plant that threatened to lead to a Nazi atom bomb.

Wilson tells the tales of derring-do—including the king’s escape with the Germans in hot pursuit—in a suitably exhilarating way. But he also fills in the fascinating historical background to Haakon’s reign, which began in 1905 when Norway became independent from Sweden and established itself as an unusually committed liberal democracy.