Budapest, by Nicholas Clapton, is an engaging & affectionate musicians-eye view of a great European capital in the process of abandoning the trappings of its Communist past, while attempting to preserve its culture from a creeping, globalised blandness. Though bland is hardly a word that can be ascribed to Budapest or its inhabitants, the author is glad to find that certain old-fashioned attitudes of courtesy & overall decency are still deeply engrained in Hungarian society. Nicholas Clapton finds that, despite Hungary’s geographical closeness to us & the political rapprochements of the last two decades, there is still a true sense of otherness in this fascinating country.