Winnie and Wolf: A Novel
by A.N. Wilson
In her infamous five-hour ‘confession’ filmed by Hans-Jurgen Syberberg in 1975, Wagner’s English-born daughter-in-law Winifred talked openly and unashamedly about her close friendship with Hitler and his support for the Bayreuth Festival, which she personally managed throughout the Third Reich. When Syberberg confronts her with the rumours that she and the Führer had a sexual relationship, she pooh-poohs the idea, and her candour is persuasive. Brigitte Hamann’s authoritative 2002 biography confirms her denial (though the letters the two exchanged remain locked away).
A.N. Wilson’s deeply clever and gripping new historical novel thinks otherwise, however. Here Winnie and Wolf (the name by which Hitler was affectionately known among the Wagner family) do dally in the bedroom, and Wilson even invents a daughter of their union, farmed out to an orphanage and then adopted by another fictional character, Winifred’s male secretary, who tells the whole story, purportedly written to the child in order to inform her of her biological parentage.
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