Danubia

<p><b>Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction</b><br><br><b>'Funny, erudite, frequently irritating . . . and never boring' &ndash; Sarah Bakewell, <i>Financial Times </i></b><br><br><b>'An excellent, rich and amusing read' &ndash; <i>The Times</i>, Book of the Week</b><br><br>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 &ndash; through luck, guile and sheer mulishness &ndash; any number of rivals, until finally packing up in 1918. From their principal lairs along the Danube they ruled most of Central Europe and Germany and interfered everywhere &ndash; indeed the history of Europe hardly makes sense without them.<br><br><i>Danubia </i>plunges the reader into a maelstrom of