Danubia is the brilliant and entertaining companion to the Sunday Times top ten bestseller Germania. It was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2013.
Simon Winder is the author of the highly praised The Man Who Saved Britain and the Sunday Times top-ten bestseller Germania. He works in publishing and lives in Wandsworth Town.
'It combines history, travelogue and digressive personal essay.
Winder is a puppyishly enthusiastic companion: funny, erudite,
frequently irritating, always more in control of his material than
he pretends to be, and never for a moment boring . . . Danubia is a
moving book, and also a sensuous one . . . Miniaturist in its eye
for detail, grand in its scope, it skips beats and keeps our
attention all the way'
*Financial Times*
'A fresh look at a region and a dynasty of which most of us in the
English-speaking world are quite ignorant' Guardian
‘Memorably funny . . . wonderfully readable and entertaining’
Sunday Times
‘Danubia is 500 years of Habsburg imperial history told in the
style of a bumbling English detective, the kind of sleuth who
appears to skirt around a knotty case and then disarmingly poses a
penetrating question . . . As with his previous work Germania,
Winder describes this account as a “personal history”, allowing him
space for whimsy, for a great deal of Haydn, for careful analysis
of paintings and the freedom to favour certain emperors because
they were interesting people rather than political heavyweights. It
all makes for an excellent, rich and amusing read’ The Times, Book
of the Week
The high plateau of my year was my catching up with Simon Winder.
Danubia and Germania are an idiosyncratic, often funny fusion of
history writing, travel writing and disrespect
*TLS*
‘Danubia is a logical sequel to Simon Winder’s quirky and
delightful Germaina . . . Political and military history supplies
Danubia with its narrative line, but Simon Winder loves to explore
the byways and odd corners of this rambling empire. He is excellent
on architecture, painting and music. Never averse to putting
himself at the centre of what he discovers on his travels, he has
written a book that is every bit as entertaining and enlightening
as Germania . . . Anyone with an interest in a part of Europe and a
section of history largely ignored in our schools and universities
will find this book richly rewarding’ Allan Massie, Literary
Review
‘Winder is an engaging host . . . The Habsburgs were, latterly,
authoritarian liberals. They survived by guile and luck, by sheer
chance and cold expediency. With the exceptions of figures like
Rudolf II, that melancholy devotee of the occult, there are few of
them one can imagine a novelist wanting to explore. Yet Winder
rightly enthuses over the contribution this odd political amalgam
made to culture . . . Danubia is astoundingly smart and negotiates
the Scylla of elegy and the Charybdis of denunciation with expert
skill. It’s also damn funny, and includes dodos, the banning of
cribs, cockatrices and the entire history of Europe’ Stuart Kelly,
Scotland of Sunday
‘There is travelogue here, with vivid descriptions of Ukrainian
towns, and Transylvanian villages. There are snatches of
autobiography too, often anecdotal and whimsical, but sometimes
filled with passion about his discoveries of art or music. The main
quality of this book, however, is its humour, which sets it aside
from the standard histories. To say that Winder is a jokey writer
would not begin to do him justice . . . And yet, and yet . . . As
the chapters roll past in their gales of hilarity, Winder manages
at the same time to do something remarkably skilful, handling
complex issues of geopolitics, national identity and cultural
change with a deep and surprising thoughtfulness’ Sunday Telegraph,
Book of the Week
Funny and yet also fantastically informative
*Observer*
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