Review of 'Danubia' by Simon Winder

I so loved this book, which felt like it had been written just for me. Lots of stuff about architecture, and music, and even regions and nationalities that I'd never heard of. It's by no means mainly about Jews, but there's lots of interesting stuff about them, including an important short passage that situates Zionism in the context of the competing nationalisms of the late C19th Habsburg empire...I knew Herzl was a Viennese Jew, but didn't realise that his family, like Freud's, were from Galicia. 

One thing he doesn't explain is why there are two regions called Galicia in Europe, which at one time were both Habsburg possessions. Turns out it's really just a coincidence. 

I wish I'd read this before I wrote The Girl in The Red Cape - if only because I would have stolen bits from the story of the  1882 Tiszaeszlár blood libel episode and put it in the book. But he's really good on the politics and the aesthetics of the Counter-Reformation too, and it would have been good to have known more about that.

I now want to read all his other books (already on order), and to listen to all the music he mentions, and to visit quite a few of the places in the book too. There were passages that I had to read out loud to Ruth because they were so beautifully written or so funny...how often do you say that about a work of popular history?