'Sebestyen reminds us once again why he is one of the best historians writing today' ANDREW ROBERTS 'As gripping as a novel . . . what canny insight this book offers into the insecurity of our own times' ANNE SEBBA 'Could not be more timely' TIM BOUVERIE 'All our politicians should read it' CLARE MULLEY In the years after the First World War, Berlin was - as Vladimir Nabokov described it - a place 'of dangerous glamour and worldliness, of tawdry cynicism, where art and riot flourished side by side.' The Weimar Republic was Germany's postwar experiment with democracy, and a time of unprecedented cultural, intellectual and artistic freedom. Berlin was at the cutting edge of quantum physics and psychoanalysis; its nightlife showcased grand opera and dissolute cabaret. Bauhaus architecture and modernist painting flourished, and it rivalled Hollywood as a capital of film. But beneath the glamour was a deeply polarised society of extremes plagued by economic disasters, populist leaders