Best books… Victor Sebestyen
Historian and journalist Victor Sebestyen picks his five favourite books. His new biography Lenin the Dictator: An Intimate Portrait has been published by Weidenfeld to coincide with the centenary of the Russian Revolution
The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, 1942 (Pushkin Press £12.99). An elegiac memoir of the “golden age” before the First World War – and how European civilisation, which seemed so safe and secure for decades, was then all but destroyed by populists, Nazis and a rogues’ gallery of cynical demagogues. Unnervingly topical.
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, 1875 (Penguin £8.99). All Trollope lovers will have their favourites among his books (so many to choose from). Mine is this occasionally angry, always wry, often hilarious anatomy of snobbery, corruption and hypocrisy in politics, high
finance and the literary world of Victorian England. It’s the way we live still.
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert, 1869 (OUP £10.99). Gauche young man… older, sophisticated woman (and French!). Sounds a cliché, but there’s never a predictable page, in one of the greatest of all European novels. I first read it at an impressionable age of romantic discovery, but find something new at each reread. The backdrop to the beautifully drawn love affair is 1848, the year of revolutions, so there’s action aplenty. The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, 1951 (Penguin £9.99).
Philosopher Arendt coined the phrase “banality of evil” about the top Nazis, and was the first to explain how the far-left and the far-right are essentially the same. She was compulsory reading when I was writing about the Cold War. In the uncertain, potentially dangerous world of today, her insights remain profoundly relevant.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, 1813 (Penguin £4.99). Like my best friend, this never lets me down. After a day researching genocide, ruthless dictators, the evils at history’s extremes – or worrying about Trump – I dip into a random chapter and think things might not be so bad after all.