Firchow reads this poem as a parable of what might have been, that is, the beauty of a potentially fruitful relationship between Britain and Germany, as told against the brutality of the actual case, not only in the period under consideration, 1910 to 1960, but also, as his introduction and conclusion suggest, in the early 21st century present when even British observers are puzzled by the degree of hostility towards Germany still expressed in, for instance, British mass media. Firchow's book does not offer a coherent narrative of Anglo-German cultural relations from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, but provides, as may already have become evident, a series of case studies, mostly based on articles which were first published in the 1980s and 1990s.