Article from the WAZ newspaper / 8 September 2010, Claudia Scholz. Just as the two coats-of-arms nestle together on the cover, Witten and Barking & Dagenham suit one another perfectly. The recently published Two Town Story is a good retrospective of this town twinning arrangement.

In fact, it is the second volume as issued by the Barking & Dagenham and Witten Club and so describes the development of the twinning from 1973 to the present-day. The club deliberately chose the early 1970s starting point because it was there that the first volume of the Two Town Story by Arthur Durrant came to a close. That was (re)published in German three years ago with updates and annotations.

The second book is also set out bilingually. Yet it is not meant to be a chronicle, says Erich Bremm, one of the German editors, and not all of the events over the last thirty years have been depicted in documentary detail. It is more a compilation of stories, short and long, about people from Witten, Barking and Dagenham. There are many amusing anecdotes too. One particular Mayor of Barking & Dagenham - considerately, his name is not disclosed - once took part in a perhaps overly festive evening and "forgot" his chain of office in its casket. Fortunately, an honest passer-by found the valuable item and handed it in. Otherwise, imagine what the uproar would have been at Barking & Dagenham Town Hall!

Some of the stories can be quite moving. The 81-year-old Ted Mansell, for example, decided in 1994 to try and locate some friends he had made in Germany during the Second World War when he was held as a prisoner-of-war for four years at a cheesery near Marienwerder in East Prussia. He was treated very well by his boss, Willi Krieg, by his foreman and by Mrs Krieg. It was only half a century later that he learnt that Willi had emigrated to Uruguay and started up a cheesery there. Meanwhile, Willi's wife Elisabeth and their daughter Eva were living in Hagen, not too far from Witten. So one year later, Witten council staff arranged for them to be brought to Witten for a reunion with Ted Mansell.

A really interesting book - and not just for members of the club.