Central Europe has shaped our culture for centuries – yet we still find the region baffling

It is easy to overlook the importance of Central Europe, writes Martyn Rady at the start of this fascinating book. For some modern writers the region is best typified by similarities, or differences, over postboxes, popular preferences for spirits over wine or ‘the heavy smell of boiled cabbage, state beer and a soapy whiff of overripe watermelons’. For others, it is an exotic world of ‘small nations’ east of Germany, where one has to wait for the end of the sentence to learn the operative verb: a place of ‘baffling’ languages ‘written with an abundance of consonants, odd diacritical marks and, in places, even a different alphabet’.

Take a step back, and Central Europe takes centre stage. Conflicts arising in the region have changed the world, from the Thirty Years’ War, which ‘engulfed almost the entire continent, with sideshows in Africa, the Caribbean and even distant Taiwan’, to the two world wars (both of which started in Central Europe), to say nothing of the present invasion of Ukraine, which is already the ‘most destructive war waged in Europe for more than 70 years’.