Eastern Europe

Is it time to say goodbye to Eastern Europe, a world remade so frequently by empires, war and political ideologies that it scarcely stays the same for two generations in a row?

Returning to the communist ‘cage’ of a childhood in Albania.

Belarusian memory of the Second World War once helped legitimise the Lukashenka regime. Now it is undermining it. 

Events in the Baltic States at the end of the First World War had serious long-term consequences.

In November 1918, writes Elizabeth Wiskemann, the first Czechoslovak Republic was founded.

Cecil Parrott describes how the elderly monarch from a Christmas carol was based on the character of a young and vigorous sovereign, assassinated on his birthday by his own brother.

Joanna Richardson describes how, during the 1830s, the world of Bohemia offered a warm and fruitful climate to artists and writers.

Michael Grant tells how, some 1000 years ago, the “Scourge of God” died on his wedding night.

Terence O’Brien recounts how some women served with their husbands in the Crimean War as cooks, laundresses and nurses to the Regiment.