Dance Between Flames: Berlin Between the Wars by Anton Gill
Between November 1919 and September 1939, many of this century's most sensational events in politics, the arts, theatre, cinema and night life took place in Berlin, where vulgarity and greatness lived side by side.
High culture, epitomized in the works of Brecht, Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator, was matched by the city's glamorously decadent night-life.
Part-politicized and part-criminal clubs thrived, the cabaret of political life sharing the same colour and exoticism as the city's underworld elements.
Anton Gill expertly describes both the political and cultural history of Berlin through those historic years.
He sketches the characters of scientists, actors and actresses, composers, conductors, painters and businessmen in an era which is arguably the nearest thing to a Renaissance revival the 20th century has seen.
Combining outstanding erudition with a compelling narrative, `A Dance Between Flames' offers a consistently fascinating overview of a key period in Germany's troubled history.
`Immensely informative and readable...Gill fills in the political history of Berlin between the wars with brilliantly evocative passages describing the cultural scene in theatre, opera, cinema, architecture, cafés and clubs' - Stephen Spender in The Times
Anton Gill has been a freelance writer since 1984, specialising in European contemporary history but latterly branching out into historical fiction. He is the winner of the H H Wingate Award for non-fiction for his study of survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, `The Journey Back From Hell'.
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