Quote of the day

"The sound of creaking leather from their collective greatcoats broke the silence as the assembled Wehrmacht officers leaned forward to examine the huge table map of the Spreewald, the vast forest area standing between the XI SS Panzer Corps and the Red Army. The problem was clear - vast stretches of gorse in the forest (ulex europeus) were in flower and it was the nesting season of the rare inversely-spotted bark-spitter".

Tim Sanders' attempt at imagining how a book entitled 'How Green Were The Nazis?' might begin. Sanders' effort was the winner of a competition on Radio 4's 'Today' programme judged by Alexander McCall Smith.