While many people are familiar with Christopher Isherwood, his Berlin novels and their film adaptation “Cabaret”, his decadent predecessors as well as female contemporaries are less well known. This exhibition, which is shown at three venues – the Bodleian Library at Oxford, Grimm-Zentrum Foyer of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Literaturhaus Berlin – invites visitors to follow in the footsteps of these less famous writers. From political exile during the First World War to intrepid reporting during the Nazi regime, from Bloomsbury visitors engaging in gay clubbing to fascist fans of Hitler – British writers were drawn to Berlin and produced varied and fascinating texts about their stays.

The exhibition at Literaturhaus Berlin as well as the exhibition in the Foyer of Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum opened on Tuesday, 15 June, and will be on display until the end of July.

A bilingual book "Happy in Berlin? English Writers in the City, The 1920s and Beyond" with 45 illustrations accompanies the exhibition. It was published by Wallstein-Verlag Göttingen.

The project website happy-in-berlin.org allows visitors to roam Berlin in the company of writers such as Virginia Woolf, Harold Nicolson, Alix Strachey, or the infamous Diana Mosley.

This exhibition is a collaboration between Prof Stefano Evangelista, Trinity College, Oxford University, Prof Gesa Stedman, Centre for British Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Literaturhaus Berlin, and the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford.