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Notes on...

Wealthy, cosmopolitan – and sometimes rough: the secrets of Hamburg (and my grandmother)

The devastated city she loved and left now has Germany’s largest population of millionaires

15 August 2015

9:00 AM

15 August 2015

9:00 AM

‘What was it like growing up in Liverpool?’ a journalist asked John Lennon. ‘I didn’t grow up in Liverpool,’ he replied. ‘I grew up in Hamburg.’ My father grew up in Hamburg too, at the end of the second world war. The city had been bombed to smithereens. Cigarettes were the only currency, and my grandma had to trade her jewellery for food.

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