'My only complaint is that it was so fascinating I wish it had been longer. What a story!' Philip Mansel

BERLIN is Europe’s most fascinating and exciting city. The great movements that have shaken Europe, from the Reformation to Marxism, have their origins in Berlin’s streets.

With its unique dialect, exceptional museums, experimental cultural scene, its liberated social life and its honest approach to its history, it is as challenging a city as it is absorbing. Too often Berlin is seen through the prism of Nazism and its role on the front line in the Cold War. Important, frightening and interesting as those periods are, its history starts much earlier.

Telling the story of its people and its rulers, from its medieval origins to the present day, this is a fascinating and informative history of an extraordinary city.