In 1979 Richard Bassett set out on a series of adventures in central Europe which allowed him to savour the last embers of the old Hapsburg lands.
From Trieste to Prague and Vienna to Warsaw, aristocrats, gangsters, diplomats and informants provided him with an unexpected counterpoint to the austerities of life along the Iron Curtain. Music and painting, architecture and landscape, food and wine, friendship and history run through the book.
‘Many were enriched by the diffident, elegant presence of Richard Bassett.’ Financial Times