'History, " says Angela Lambert, insofar as it has taken any notice of Eva . . .has returned a damning verdict." It is time for a reappraisal, Lambert argues, of the woman who was Hitler's mistress for 14 years and who married him in the Berlin bunker the day before they both committed suicide.

How does one go about reappraising someone who loved one of the most despicable characters in history? Lambert could have taken an academic approach, comparing Braun with the wives and lovers of other 20th century dictators; or perhaps a political one, assessing her position as a woman within the context of the times. But neither would have worked. Eva Braun, in Lambert's eyes, was apolitical; hidden away at the infamous Berghof in Obersalzberg, nobody, apart from Hitler's closest confidants, even knew of her existence.

Nobody, that is, apart from journalists for the Paris Soir newspaper . . . who exposed Braun's relationship with Hitler in 1936 . . . Braun's own extended family of uncles, aunts and cousins, some of whom made visits to the Berghof in spite of their own objections to Hitler, and the multitude of servants and assistants who accompanied the Fuhrer and other Nazis on their regular stays at the Berghof. So quite a few people knew about Eva Braun as it turns out, although everybody says they didn't.

It's almost impossible to remain objective about Braun, although Lambert does try. Interspersed with details about Braun's life, the author gives us glimpses of her own middle-class German mother, Edith Schroder, born just a month after Braun herself. From her mother, Lambert has absorbed those tiny domestic details that also illuminate Braun's early life . . . the food both girls would have eaten as good young German girls, the songs they would have sung, the books they would have read.

These personal family touches do not soften us towards Braun; Lambert does not want to excuse her. But she does want to try and understand her (just as she tries to understand her own mother's latent racism). Eva Braun met Hitler while she was an assistant in a photography shop that he frequented. At the time, he was involved in a highly charged relationship with his own niece, 19-yearold Geli Raubal. It was the late 1920s and Hitler was establishing his power base.

That incestuous affair came to an end when Geli killed herself, a few hours after a blazing row. ?In the end, being Hitler's partner . . . whether for four years or 13 . . . entitles both young women to be called tragic heroines, " writes Lambert.

This last statement is disputable; Eva knew all about Geli . . . she was her rival after all . . . and one might think that the suicide of one lover might be bad news for the other. In fact, Eva was to try and take her life twice in the next few years, as she struggled to keep Hitler's attention.

Her diary, dated from February to May 1935, reveals her to be a ?tormented figure", according to Lambert, ?emotionally strained by her lover's neglect and driven half insane by her need for him". The photograph albums she left behind tell us much more about Eva the person . . . how she wanted to be in films, loved glamour and dressing up, played the good hostess, and was fond of children and small dogs. The other Nazi wives looked down on her.

Whether Eva was as miserable as contemporaries have stated, holed up at the Berghof, without access to radios or newspapers (Hitler preferred her to remain apolitical) and longing for the child that her lover would never permit her to have, can only be guessed at.

Certainly, Lambert never lets us forget the daily struggles faced by women during the war, while Eva was dining on the best food, wearing the latest fashions and sheltering in beautiful surroundings.

But she does want us to see Eva very much as an innocent . . . ignorant of the Holocaust, of the hardships Germans were suffering, of anything but love for her man.

At times she almost succeeds in convincing us. And then, suddenly, there are moments when it all turns around, in such passages as Lambert's description of a young Eva, high-spirited and full of fun, teasing her more serious big sister Ilse. That scene reminds the reader of yet another spirited young girl, bright and loving to play games, and always impatient with her sombre elder sibling:

Anne Frank and her sister Margot.