Onze boeken

Last Days in Old Europe: Trieste '79, Vienna '85, Prague '89

Door Richard Bassett

Categorie
Geschiedenis Europa
Boeknummer
#410345-XQ30
Titel
Last Days in Old Europe: Trieste '79, Vienna '85, Prague '89
Auteur
Bassett, Richard
Boektype
Gebonden hardcover
Uitgeverij
London : Allan Lane
Jaar van uitgave
2019
ISBN10
0241014867
ISBN13
9780241014868
Taal
Engels
Beschrijving
Paperback, 8vo.
Samenvatting
'With these vivid, wistful memoirs, he joins the great chroniclers of Europe - the Prousts, Zweigs, Lampedusas, Leigh-Fermors and Bassanis - and shows how some of the things those writers loved persisted as late as 1989.' (Economist)

Selected as a Book of the Year in the TLS and Spectator

In 1979 Richard Bassett set out on a series of adventures and encounters in central Europe which allowed him to savour the last embers of the cosmopolitan old Hapsburg lands and gave him a ringside seat at the fall of another ancien regime, that of communist rule. From Trieste to Prague and Vienna to Warsaw, fading aristocrats, charming gangsters, fractious diplomats and glamorous informants provided him with an unexpected counterpoint to the austerities of life along the Iron Curtain, first as a pr... (Lees verder)ofessional musician and then as a foreign correspondent.
The book shows us familiar events and places from unusual vantage points: dilapidated mansions and boarding-houses, train carriages and cafes, where the game of espionage between east and west is often set. There are unexpected encounters with Shirley Temple, Fitzroy Maclean, Lech Walesa and the last Empress of Austria. Bassett finds himself at the funeral of King Nicola of Montenegro in Cetinje, plays bridge with the last man alive to have been decorated by the Austrian Emperor Franz-Josef and watches the KGB representative in Prague bestowing the last rites on the Soviet empire in Europe.

Music and painting, architecture and landscape, food and wine, friendship and history run through the book. The author is lucky, observant and leans romantically towards the values of an older age. He brilliantly conjures the time, the people he meets, and Mitteleuropa in one of the pivotal decades of its history.
Pagina's
206
Conditie
Goed
Prijs
€ 15,00

Zie ook

Onze gebruikte boeken verkeren in goede tweedehands staat, tenzij hierboven anders beschreven. Kleine onvolkomenheden zijn niet altijd vermeld.