1. The first ever biography of the extraordinarily colourful Archduke Wilhelm von Habsburg (1895-1947). Tattooed, bisexual, crossdressing, multilingual, he was a major - & symbolic - figure in 20th-century European culture & politics. 2. Born into one of the great European dynasties with every expectation of a glittering future, instead he became a playboy in Paris during the 1930s & died - a spy for Britain - under interrogation in a Soviet prison. 3. The arc of Wilhelm's life therefore describes the dying fall of the ancien regime - the Europe of his birth bears very little resemblance to that of his death. 4. Operating largely in inter-war Europe, Wilhelm is like a Le Carre character - a prisoner of private impulses that drove him to a doomed secret war. 5. To the history of the Second World War the book adds a detailed discussion of Hitler's confrontation with a particular object of his loathing - the Habsburg family. 6. A major subject of the book is Soviet communism and it's effect on the individual; cf Vassily Grossman's Life & Fate & A Writer at War. 7.This is a book of exceptional brilliance and originality - it cites documents from 20 archives & in 12 languages; each chapter title is a different colour.