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

by Richard Bassett

£9.99

History; Biography & True Stories

Paperback

9780141979991

Published by Penguin Books Ltd

Published February 2020

Books > Biography > History

The final decade of the Cold War, through the eyes of a laconic and elegant observer

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 ancient 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 professional 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.

Erotic Vagrancy by Roger Lewis | 9780857381729

Erotic Vagrancy

Roger Lewis

£30.00

Lawrence of Arabia by Ranulph Fiennes | 9780241450611

Lawrence of Arabia

Ranulph Fiennes

£25.00

Hockney by Simon Elliott | 9780711288423

Hockney

Simon Elliott

£16.99

Shakespeare by Dame Judi Dench | 9780241632178

Shakespeare

Dame Judi Dench

£25.00

The Mirror and the Road by William Boyd | 9780241987339

The Mirror and the Road

William Boyd

£10.99

The Making of the Modern Middle East by Jeremy Bowen | 9781509890934

The Making of the Modern Middle East

Jeremy Bowen

£10.99