For nearly fifty years after the end of the Second World War, Albania remained in almost total isolation from the rest of the world. The hard-line communist dictatorship sealed the tiny country's borders in an effort to preserve Albania and the ruling regime from the threat posed by Western Powers and from neighbouring countries and their territorial ambitions. When the communist regime finally collapsed in 1992, Albania emerged into a Balkans ravaged by civil war in neighbouring Yugoslavia, which spread into the regions bordering Albania inhabited by significant ethnic Albanian minorities. As the war ignited in Kosova, tens of thousands of Albanian refugees fled into Albania, which itself was suffering violent internal conflict. Albania had entered the post-communist world in an impoverished and broken state, immersed in civil strife between the new quasi-democratic government and the opposition socialists, which culminated into virtual civil war in 1997 that pitted northerners against southerners with more than 4,000 deaths. Amidst the chaos, the disintegration of Yugoslavia ignited a new Albanian national question that had lain dormant since 1945. There were calls for the creation of a 'Greater Albania' to incorporate Yugoslavia's Albanian minorities within the 'Mother' state, which was to also include an area of north-western Greece which had historically been inhabited by ethnic Albanians known as Chams. The Chams were forced to leave their homeland following three distinct phases: the first during the Balkans Wars 1912-14; the second resulting from the Greek-Turkish population exchanges in the 1920s; the third at the end of the Second World War. The calls for a 'Greater Albania' alarmed Albania's neighbours and the international community, who viewed it as a serious threat to the stability of the entire southern Balkans. This resurgence of pan-Albanian nationalism was, however, far more layered and complex than was understood at the time, even by the various ethnic Albanian groups and their vocal Diaspora. This collection of papers and essays has not previously been published outside select academic outlets. They appear here for the first time with the aim of offering new perspectives on the underlying nature of pan-Albanianism, its aspirations and the post-Cold War dynamics of the Albanian world. These remain serious, unresolved problems in the region at the present time.

General Heinz Guderian's revolutionary strategic vision and his skill in armored combat brough Germany its initial victories during World War II. Combining Guderian's land offensive with Luftwaffe attacks, the Nazi Blitzkrieg decimated the defenses of Poland, Norway, France--and, very neatly, Russia--at the war's outset. But in 1941, when Guderian advised that ground forces should take a step back, Hitler dismissed him. In these pages, the outspoken general shares his candid point of view on what would have led Germany to victory, and what ensured that it didn't. In addition to providing a rare inside look at key members of the Nazi party, Guderian reveals in detail how he developed the Panzer tank forces and orchestrated their various campaigns, from the break through at Sedan to his drive to the Channel coast that virtually decided the Battle of France. "Panzer Leader"became a bestseller within one year of its original publication in 1952 and has since been recognized as a classic account of the greatest conflict of our time.

A gripping eyewitness account of a major 20th-century military conflict by the UK's most popular writer on geopolitics; The shattering of Yugoslavia in the 1990s showed that, after nearly 50 years of peace, war could return to Europe. It came to its bloody conclusion in Kosovo in 1999.; Tim Marshall, then diplomatic editor at Sky News, was on the ground covering the Kosovo War. This is his illuminating account of how events unfolded, a thrilling journalistic memoir drawing on personal experience, eyewitness accounts, and interviews with intelligence officials from five countries.; Twenty years on from the war's end, with the rise of Russian power, a weakened NATO and stalled EU expansion, this story is more relevant than ever, as questions remain about the possibility of conflict on European soil. Utterly gripping, this is Tim Marshall at his very best: behind the lines, under fire and full of the insight that has made him one of Britain's foremost writers on geopolitics.

Fernan Gonzalez lived from about AD 910 to 970. The popular image of him is of a fearsome warrior who gave his people protection from their enemies (both Muslim and Christian), and a wise and respected lord who enabled them to live in security and harmony. He was generally accepted to have played a strategic role in achieving independence for Castile and freeing it from dominance by the kingdom of Leon. The Poema de Fernan Gonzalez was composed (by an unknown author) in the mid-thirteenth century as an enduring celebration of his triumphs and account of his life and deeds. Fact and legend have become intertwined and there is much within its stanzas that is certainly not closely based on historic facts! This new translation is set against a detailed study of the historic context of the Castillian conflicts and a factual account of the life and achievements of Fernan Gonzalez. The political situation of the time in which the poem was composed is also considered, as is the manner in which the'history' it espouses came to be handed down over three centuries, the possibility of a pre-existing rich oral tradition surrounding this iconic figure, and the possible sources employed by the poet in constructing the poem.

In 2017, DNA tests revealed to the collective shock of many scholars that a Viking warrior in a high-status grave in Birka, Sweden, was actually a woman. The Real Valkyrie weaves together archaeology, history and literature to reinvent her life and times, showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians have imagined. Nancy Marie Brown links the Birka warrior, whom she names Hervor, to Viking trading towns and to their great trade route east to Byzantium and beyond. She imagines Hervor's adventures intersecting with larger-than-life but real women, including Queen Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings, the Viking leader known as the Red Girl, and Queen Olga of Kyiv. Hervor's short, dramatic life shows that much of what we have taken as truth about women in the Viking Age is based not on data but on nineteenth-century Victorian biases. Rather than holding the household keys, Viking women in history, the sagas, poetry and myth carry weapons. In this compelling narrative, Brown brings the world of those valkyries and shield-maids to vivid life.

The place of religion in the Enlightenment has been keenly debated for many years. Research has tended, however, to examine the interplay of religion and knowledge in Western countries, often ignoring the East. In Enlightenment and religion in the Orthodox World leading historians address this imbalance by exploring the intellectual and cultural challenges and changes that took place in Orthodox communities during the eighteenth century. The two main centres of Orthodoxy, the Greek-speaking world and the Russian Empire, are the focus of early chapters, with specialists analysing the integration of modern cosmology into Greek education, and the Greek alternative 'enlightenment', the spiritual Philokalia. Russian experts also explore the battle between the spiritual and the rational in the works of Voulgaris and Levshin. Smaller communities of Eastern Europe were faced with their own particular difficulties, analysed by contributors in the second part of the book. Governed by modernising princes who embraced Enlightenment ideals, Romanian society was fearful of the threat to its traditional beliefs, whilst Bulgarians were grappling in different ways with a new secular ideology. The particular case of the politically-divided Serbian world highlights how Dositej Obradovic's complex humanist views have been used for varying ideological purposes ever since. The final chapter examines the encroachment of the secular on the traditional in art, and the author reveals how Western styles and models of representation were infiltrating Orthodox art and artefacts. Through these innovative case studies this book deepens our understanding of how Christian and secular systems of knowledge interact in the Enlightenment, and provides a rich insight into the challenges faced by leaders and communities in eighteenth-century Orthodox Europe.

Historiography formed an unusually important component of the popular culture and heritage of east European Jewry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was a period of social, economic, and political upheaval, and for the emerging class of educated Jews the writing and reading of Jewish history provided not only intellectual but also emotional and moral sustenance. Facing an insecure future became easier with an understanding of the past, and of the Jewish place in that past. This volume is devoted to the development of Jewish historiography in the three east European centres-Congress Poland, the Russian empire, and Galicia-that together contained the majority of world Jewry at that time. Drawing widely on the multilingual body of scholarly and popular literature that emerged in that turbulent environment, the contributors to this volume attempt to go beyond the established paradigms in the study of Jewish historiography, and specifically to examine the relationship between the writing of Jewish history and of non-Jewish history in eastern Europe. In doing so they expose the tension between the study of the Jewish past in a communal setting and in a wider, regional, setting that located Jews firmly in the non-Jewish political, economic, and cultural environment. They also explore the relationship between 'history'-seen as the popular understanding of the past-and 'scholarly history'-interpretation of the past through the academic study of the sources, which lays claim to objectivity and authority. The development of Jewish historical scholarship grew out of the new intellectual climate of the Haskalah, which encouraged novel modes of thinking about self and others and promoted critical enquiry and new approaches to traditional sources. At the same time, however, in response to what the traditionalists perceived as secular research, an Orthodox historiography also emerged, driven not only by scholarly curiosity but also by the need to provide a powerful counterweight in the struggle against modernity. In fact, east European Jewish historiography has undergone many methodological, thematic, and ideological transformations over the last two centuries. Even today, east European Jewish historiography revisits many of the questions of importance to scholars and audiences since its emergence: how Jews lived, both within the narrow Jewish world and in contact with the wider society; the limits of Jewish insularity and integration; expressions of persecution and anti-Jewish violence; and also Jewish contributions to the societies and states of eastern Europe. Many challenges still remain: questions of the purpose of the research, its ideological colouring, and its relevance for contemporary Jewish communities. The fruit of research in many disciplines and from different methodological points of view, this volume has much to offer scholars of modern Jewry trying to understand how east European Jews saw themselves as they struggled with the concepts of modernity and national identity and how their history continues to be studied and discussed by an international community of scholars.

A scintillating history of one of Europe's most alluring cities. Granada is a deceptive city, concealing a layered past and a complex character. The last Muslim capital in Western Europe, over the centuries it has captured hearts and imaginations, inspiring countless myths and legends. Yet its history reveals even more fascinating tales: secrets and follies, victory and failure, poetry and art. City of Illusions brings together Granada's many stories-the archaeological forger, the renegade French general, the garrotted liberal heroine, the Jewish poet who served two Muslim rulers. This colourful cast of characters takes us from the founding eleventh-century dynasty and the building of the Alhambra, through the Reconquista, French occupation and Spanish Civil War, right up to the present day. Granada's history has long been fought over, rewritten, idealised or buried. This rich, elegant book sets the record straight on a beautiful, elusive city, with all its quirks, mysteries, intrigues and triumphs.

The Francoist command in the Spanish Civil War carried out a programme of mass violence from the start of the conflict. Through a combination of death squads and the use of military trials around 150,000 Spaniards met their deaths. Others perished in concentration camps and prisons. The terror took other forms, such as mass rape, extortion, "appropriation" of children and forced exile. The planned nature of this violence meant that the Francoists decided when the violence would begin, the way it would be carried out and when it would come to an end. This is a primary reason why the judicial concept of genocidal practice, alongside the use of comparative history, can furnish insights. The July 1936 uprising was not only aimed at ending the Republican regime, but had ideological goals: preventing the supposed Bolshevik Revolution, defending the 'unity of Spain' and reversing centre-left social and cultural reforms. An over-arching objective was the elimination of a social group identified as 'an enemy of Spain' -- a group defined as: not Catholic, not Spanish, not traditional. The genocidal intent of the coup via access to state resources, their monopoly of force in some territories and their subsequent victory ensured that the practice of genocide could be realised in the whole Spanish territory, permitting the hegemonic nature of the denialist discourse surrounding these crimes. Public debate over Francosim brings with it substantive disagreements. The book engages with the root causes of these disagreements. Violence and the memory of violence are viewed as part of a single phenomenon that has continued to the present, a process that is located within a comparative framework that analyses the Spanish case beyond the debate between Francoism and anti-Francoism. The author explains the political and judicial proceedings in recent Spanish history with regard to its violent past and the implications for international justice initiatives. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, LSE.

In this ground-breaking work, Norman Cantor explains how our current notion of the Middle Ages-with its vivid images of wars, tournaments, plagues, saints and kings, knights and ladies-was born in the twentieth century. The medieval world was not simply excavated through systematic research. It had to be conceptually created: It had to be invented, and this is the story of that invention.

Norman Cantor focuses on the lives and works of twenty of the great medievalists of this century, demonstrating how the events of their lives, and their spiritual and emotional outlooks, influenced their interpretations of the Middle Ages. Cantor makes their scholarship an intensely personal and passionate exercise, full of color and controversy, displaying the strong personalities and creative minds that brought new insights about the past.

A revolution in academic method, this book is a breakthrough to a new way of teaching the humanities and historiography, to be enjoyed by student and general public alike. It takes an immense body of learning and transmits it so that readers come away fully informed of the essentials of the subject, perceiving the interconnection of medieval civilization with the culture of the twentieth century and having had a good time while doing it! This is a riveting, entertaining, humorous, and learned read, compulsory for anyone concerned about the past and future of Western civilization.

In an era haunted by its past, modern Europe sought to break with the old; the future and the new became the ideal. In Italy however, where the remains of the past dominated the landscape, ruins were a token both of decadence and of the inspiring legacy of tradition. Sabrina Ferri proposes a counter-narrative to the European story of progress by focusing on the often-marginalized and distinctive case of Italy. For Italians, ruins uncovered the creative potential of the past, transforming it into an inexhaustible source of philosophical speculation and poetic invention whilst simultaneously symbolizing decay, loss and melancholy. Focusing on the representation of ruins by Italian writers, scientists, and artists between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Sabrina Ferri explores the culture of the period and traces Italy's complex relationship with its past. Combining the analysis of major works, from Vico's New science to Leopardi's Canti, with that of archival sources and little-studied materials such as scientific travel journals, letters, and political essays, the author reveals how: the ruin became a figure for Italy's uneasy transition into modernity; the interplay between reflections on the processes of history and speculations on the laws of nature shaped the country's sense of the past and its vision of the future; the convergence of narratives depicting historical and natural change influenced both the creative arts and the emerging sciences of geology, biology, and archaeology; the temporal crisis at the dawn of the nineteenth century called into question traditional models for investigating the past and understanding the present.

Nadia Comaneci is the Romanian child prodigy and global gymnastics star who ultimately fled her homeland and the brutal oppression of a communist regime. At the age of just 14, Nadia became the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games and went on to collect three gold medals in performances which influenced the sport for generations to come, cementing Nadia's place as a sporting legend. However, as the communist authorities in Romania sought an iron grip over its highest-profile athletes, Nadia and her trainers were subjected to surveillance from the Securitate, the Romanian secret police. Drawing on 25,000 secret police archive pages, countless secret service intelligence documents, and numerous wiretap recordings, this book tells the compelling story of Nadia's life and career using unique insights from the communist dictatorship which monitored her. Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police explores Nadia's complex and combustible relationship with her sometimes abusive coaches, Bela and Marta Karolyi, figures who would later become embroiled in the USA Gymnastics scandal. The book addresses Nadia's mental struggles and 1978 suicide attempt, and her remarkable resurgence to gold at the Moscow Olympics in 1980. It explores the impact of Nadia's subsequent withdrawal from international activity and reflects on burning questions surrounding the heart-stopping, border-hopping defection to the United States that she successfully undertook in November 1989. Was the defection organised by CIA agents? Was it arranged on the orders of President George Bush himself? Or was Nadia aided and abetted by some of the very Securitate officers who were meant to be watching the communist world's most lauded sporting icon? What is revealed is a thrilling tale of endurance and escape, in which one of the world's greatest gymnasts risked everything for freedom.

What did Europe owe Spain in the eighteenth century? This infamous question, posed by Nicolas Masson de Morvilliers in the Encyclopedie methodique, caused an international uproar at the height of the Enlightenment. His polemical article 'Espagne', with its tabloid-like prose, resonated with a French-reading public that blamed the Spanish Empire for France's eroding economy. Spain was outraged, and responded by publishing its own translation-rebuttal, the article 'Espana' penned by Julian de Velasco for the Spanish Encyclopedia metodica. In this volume, the original French and Spanish articles are presented in facing-page English translations, allowing readers to examine the content and rhetorical maneuvers of Masson's challenge and Velasco's riposte. This comparative format, along with the editors' critical introduction, extensive annotations, and an accompanying bibliographical essay, reveals how knowledge was translated and transferred across Europe and the transatlantic world. The two encyclopedia articles bring to life a crucial period of Spanish history, culture and commerce, while offering an alternative framework for understanding the intellectual underpinnings of a Spanish Enlightenment that differed radically from French philosophie. Ultimately, this book uncovers a Spain determined to claim its place in the European Enlightenment and on the geopolitical stage.

As early as the third century, St Maurice-an Egyptian-became leader of the legendary Roman Theban Legion. Ever since, there have been richly varied encounters between those defined as 'Africans' and those called 'Europeans'. Yet Africans and African Europeans are still widely believed to be only a recent presence in Europe. Olivette Otele traces a long African European heritage through the lives of individuals both ordinary and extraordinary. She uncovers a forgotten past, from Emperor Septimius Severus, to enslaved Africans living in Europe during the Renaissance, and all the way to present-day migrants moving to Europe's cities. By exploring a history that has been long overlooked, she sheds light on questions very much alive today-on racism, identity, citizenship, power and resilience. 'African Europeans' is a landmark account of a crucial thread in Europe's complex history. A Guardian Best Book of 2020 A History Today Book of the Year, 2020 A Waterstones Best Book of 2020

During the early modern period the public postal systems became central pillars of the emerging public sphere. Despite the importance of the post in the transformation of communication, commerce and culture, little has been known about the functioning of the post or how it affected the lives of its users and their societies. In Postal culture in Europe, 1500-1800, Jay Caplan provides the first historical and cultural analysis of the practical conditions of letter-exchange at the dawn of the modern age. Caplan opens his analysis by exploring the economic, political, social and existential interests that were invested in the postal service, and traces the history of the three main European postal systems of the era, the Thurn and Taxis, the French Royal Post and the British Post Office. He then explores how the post worked, from the folding and sealing of letters to their collection, sorting, and transportation. Beyond providing service to the general public, these systems also furnished early modern states with substantial revenue and effective surveillance tools in the form of the Black Cabinets or Black Chambers. Caplan explains how postal services highlighted the tension between state power and the emerging concept of the free individual, with rights to private communication outside the public sphere. Postal systems therefore affected how letter writers and readers conceived and expressed themselves as individuals, which the author demonstrates through an examination of the correspondence of Voltaire and Rousseau, not merely as texts but as communicative acts. Ultimately, Jay Caplan provides readers with both a comprehensive overview of the changes wrought by the newly-public postal system - from the sounds that one heard to the perception of time and distance - and a thought provoking account of the expectations and desires that have led to our culture of instant communication.

Here is a fresh perspective on the last tumultuous years of the Soviet Union and an exquisitely poetic travelogue.  With a keen grasp of Russia's history, a deep appreciation for its architecture and iconography, and an inexhaustible enthusiasm for its people and its culture, Colin Thubron is the perfect guide to a country most of us will never get to know firsthand.  Here, we can walk down western Russia's country roads, rest in its villages, and explore some of the most engaging cities in the world.  Beautifully written and infinitely insightful, Among the Russians is vivid, compelling travel writing that will also appeal to readers of history and current events--and to anyone captivated by the shape and texture of one of the world's most enigmatic culture.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. In 1936, George Orwell volunteered as a soldier in the Spanish Civil War. In Homage to Catalonia, first published just before the outbreak of World War II, Orwell documents the chaos and bloodshed of that moment in history and the voices of those who fought against rising fascism. His experience of the civil war would spark a significant change in his own political views, which readers today will recognise in much of his later literary work; a rage against the threat of totalitarianism and control.

The Francoist command in the Spanish Civil War carried out a programme of mass violence from the start of the conflict. Through a combination of death squads and the use of military trials around 150,000 Spaniards met their deaths. Others perished in concentration camps and prisons. The terror took other forms, such as mass rape, extortion, "appropriation" of children and forced exile. The planned nature of this violence meant that the Francoists decided when the violence would begin, the way it would be carried out and when it would come to an end. This is a primary reason why the judicial concept of genocidal practice, alongside the use of comparative history, can furnish insights. The July 1936 uprising was not only aimed at ending the Republican regime, but had ideological goals: preventing the supposed Bolshevik Revolution, defending the 'unity of Spain' and reversing centre-left social and cultural reforms. An over-arching objective was the elimination of a social group identified as 'an enemy of Spain' -- a group defined as: not Catholic, not Spanish, not traditional. The genocidal intent of the coup via access to state resources, their monopoly of force in some territories and their subsequent victory ensured that the practice of genocide could be realised in the whole Spanish territory, permitting the hegemonic nature of the denialist discourse surrounding these crimes. Public debate over Francosim brings with it substantive disagreements. The book engages with the root causes of these disagreements. Violence and the memory of violence are viewed as part of a single phenomenon that has continued to the present, a process that is located within a comparative framework that analyses the Spanish case beyond the debate between Francoism and anti-Francoism. The author explains the political and judicial proceedings in recent Spanish history with regard to its violent past and the implications for international justice initiatives. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, LSE.

Spain's Martyred Cities studies international reactions to the Spanish Civil War between the Battle of Madrid in November 1936 and the bombing of Guernica in April 1937. Many of the iconic events of the war belong to this key period, when international perceptions of the conflict were decisively shaped. The subject is approached through French and British newspapers and pamphlets, and events are linked to both their immediate press coverage and subsequent literary and artistic representations. For contemporaries, the aerial bombardments of Madrid, Guernica and other cities formed part of a single unbroken narrative. It was only later that Guernica acquired its perceived symbolic primacy. The language of martyrdom' was sometimes evoked in pro-Republican writing as a means of challenging Francoist claims to the religious and moral high ground. But the ur-text was The Martyrdom of Madrid (1937), a compilation of the posthumous, censored reports of the French correspondent Louis Delapree on the bombing of Madrid. Delapree's earliest reporting (JulyOctober 1936) was from both the Nationalist and Republican zones, and is used to provide an introductory overview of the early stages of the war; he was an eyewitness of the aerial bombardments of Madrid in November 1936; subsequently, the posthumous publication of his writings created a major stir in Paris. Delapree's powerful and emotive writing provides a platform from which to discuss issues of press censorship and journalistic practice. It is notable for its initial impact, when publication in no less than five languages enabled it to reach writers as different as Virginia Woolf and Andre Malraux. This book shows that Delapree's reports were also an important catalyst in Picasso's artistic involvement in the war, culminating in his Guernica. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies

Traditional historiography has tended to disregard and even deny Spain's role in the Enlightenment, banishing the country to a benighted geographical periphery. In The Spanish Enlightenment revisited a team of experts overturns the myth of the 'dark side of Europe' and examines the authentic place of Spain in the intellectual economy of the Enlightenment. Contributors to this book explore how institutional and social changes in eighteenth-century Spain sharpened the need for modernisation. Examination of major constitutional and social initiatives, such as the development of new scientific projects and economic societies, the reform of criminal law, and a re-evaluation of the country's colonial policies, reveals how ideas, principles and practices from the wider European Enlightenment are adapted for the country's specific context. Through detailed analysis authors investigate: the evolution of public opinion, and the Republic of letters; the growth of political economy as an intellectual discipline; the transmission and reception of an Enlightenment discourse in the Spanish Empire; Spain's role in shaping a modern conception of the natural sciences. The portrait of a demarginalised, modernising and enlightened Spain emerges clearly from this book; in so doing, it opens up new avenues of research both within the history of the pan-European Enlightenment, and in colonial studies.

The captivating biography of three women courageously struggling to survive the turbulence of war-time Berlin. Meet Maria, Hannelore, and Kaethe, telephone operators during the rise and fall of Hitler's Germany. Based on live interviews, personal documents, and historical research, author Arthur Rathburn has created a compelling page-turner of decades of friendship and courage throughout the daily tribulations of peace and war.

This book, translated from the original Spanish, is the primary academic and historical study of the Blue Division -- a Falangist initiative involving the dispatch of some forty-thousand Spanish combatants (over a half of whom paid with their lives, health, or liberty) to the Russian Front during the Second World War. Xavier Moreno Julia does not limit himself to relating their deeds under arms, but also analyses -- for the first time -- the political background in detail: the complex relations between the Spanish government and Hitler's Germany; the internal conflicts between the Falangists and the Army; the rise and fall of Franco's brother-in-law, Minister Ramon Serrano Suner, who inspired the Blue Division and became the second most powerful person in Spain; and the attitude of General Agustin Munoz Grandes, commander of the Blue Division, who was encouraged by Berlin to seriously consider the possibility of taking over the reins of Spanish power. In the end, there were 45,500 reasons that led to joining the Blue Division -- one for each young man who decided to enlist. To understand all of the complex reasons behind their military service under German command is impossible at this juncture. It is an irrecoverable past that lies in Spanish cemeteries and on the Russian steppes. This book, based on massive documentation in German, British and Spanish archives, is an essential source of information to understand Spain in the 1940s -- an epoch when the Caudillo's power and the regime's good fortune were less secure than is often believed. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, LSE.

'I fell in love with Porto and I love it still. The city's spectacular bridges, its vertiginous riverbanks, steep with ancient buildings, the old port houses, the wide squares: I was entranced by them all.' J.K. ROWLING One of the oldest cities in Europe, Porto is recognised the world over for its wonderful Port wine. Rising from the steep banks of the Douro (the river of gold) with picturesque pracas, churches and houses with colourfully tiled facades. Its ancient name Portucale forms the origin of the country - Portugal. Today, Porto is a vibrant commercial and cultural centre that is proud of its historic links to the outside world. An essential read from one of the world's foremost writers on Portugal, Porto: Gateway to the World uses the beautiful buildings and landmarks across the city to take the reader on a journey through its rich history, from its origins right up to the modern era.