On a train to Berlin in late 1930, William Bradshaw locks eyes with Arthur Norris.

This chance encounter ignites a close friendship between the two Englishmen, one that draws Bradshaw into the seedier quarters of the city. Here, Norris runs a dubious import–export business and lives in excited fear of his bullying secretary, his creditors and his dominatrix girlfriend, Anni. Yet there is something sinister about Norris himself. Bradshaw’s new companion is a man of contradictions: heavily in debt but extraordinarily lavish, excessively polite but sexually deviant. He soon pulls the gullible Bradshaw deep into a dangerous political game.

‘A sort of glorified shocker,’ as Isherwood described it, Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) brings to life the city of Berlin, teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Nicholas Boulton is in his element with its razor-sharp prose and dark humour.