Last Days in Old Europe
Trieste '79, Vienna '85, Prague '89
'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 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.
A merging of memoir, history and reportage comparable to Patrick Leigh Fermor, looking back at the intricacies of lived experience in the Trieste of 1979, the Vienna of 1985 and the Prague of 1989.
| Autor: | Bassett Richard |
|---|---|
| ISBN: | 9780141979991 |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Produktart: | Kartoniert / Broschiert |
| Verlag: | Penguin Books |
| Veröffentlicht: | 27.02.2020 |
| Untertitel: | Trieste '79, Vienna '85, Prague '89 |
| Schlagworte: | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs Czech Republic Czechia Czechoslovakia European History HISTORY / Europe / General Italy Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999 Memoirs Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 Trieste USSR, Soviet Union Vienna austria c 1970 to c 1979 c 1980 to c 1989 |
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