On a visit to Budapest in the 1930s, an unimpressed H.L. Mencken remarked that the former imperial capital had the feeling of “an empty ballroom.” Having been shorn of half its territory after World War I, Budapest’s grandeur was an awkward fit for a country of 8 million people caught between the rising totalitarian powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union . However, before things took a turn for the worse, the city enjoyed an Indian summer of high living and international intrigue through the 1930s and into the early years of World War II. The strange autumn of Hungary ’s capital and the war’s inevitable intrusion are the subjects of The Last Days of Budapest , a vivid new history from the British writer Adam LeBor.

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