Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2013

'Funny, erudite, frequently irritating . . . and never boring' Sarah Bakewell, Financial Times 'An excellent, rich and amusing read' The Times, Book of the Week

For centuries much of Europe was in the hands of the very peculiar Habsburg family. An unstable mixture of wizards, obsessives, melancholics, bores, musicians and warriors, they saw off - through luck, guile and sheer mulishness - any number of rivals, until fina ...