The Austrians: A Thousand year Odyssey, by Gordon Brook Shepherd (HarperCollins, £8.99 in UK)

Austria was the core of the old Habsburg lands, the German speaking heartland of a multi racial empire, and it survives as a …

Austria was the core of the old Habsburg lands, the German speaking heartland of a multi racial empire, and it survives as a small but virile republic, recently become a member of the EU. As most schoolboys know, the Habsburgs marked their arrival in history by the defeat of Ottokar of Bohemia at Marchfeld in 1278, and they bowed out from the European stage with the collapse of the empire after defeat, in the first World War. Maria Theresia, her son Joseph the reformer, the long lived, long ruling Franz Josef, all make onstage appearances, but perhaps the most valuable sections of this book deal with the vicissitudes of the republic between the world wars, the 1938 takeover by Hitler and the slow postwar recovery of nationhood and self respect. Illustrated.