As victory over Japan was declared in 1945, Britain was a relieved but also a profoundly traumatized country. The war had ruined Britain's image of itself as a great power. This book explores this trauma through a quintessential British figure of the time, the great necessary invention, James Bond.

Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2013 'Funny, erudite, frequently irritating . . . and never boring' Sarah Bakewell, Financial Times 'An excellent, rich and amusing read' The Times, Book of the Week For centuries much of Europe was in the hands of the very peculiar Habsburg family. An unstable mixture of wizards, obsessives, melancholics, bores, musicians and warriors, they saw off - through luck, guile and sheer mulishness - any number of rivals, until finally packing up in 1918. From their principal lairs along the Danube they ruled most of Central Europe...

The Sunday Times Bestseller 'Entertaining and informative . . . Delightful' Independent There are many reasons to be fascinated by Germany: forests, architecture and fairy tales, not to mention its history and inhabitants' penchant for very peculiar food. Our distant and often maligned cousin, this is a place in which innumerable strange characters have held power, in which a chaotic jigsaw of borders have moved about seemingly at random, and which at the dark heart of the 20th century fell into the hands of truly terrible forces. And now Simon Winder is here to tell us everything else...