Pungent, witty, sometimes hilarious, deftly satirical, but written from a place of deep love and affection if also exasperation and, as you might well imagine when the twentieth century comes around, borderline despair. Personalities, politics, instiutions, geography, borders, customs and endless little museums, displays, historical folk-park nonsense, often appalling monuments and frescos, meander through this exploration of place and history and, not incidentally, the mindset of the writer for whom it is all a sort of resigned obsession.