Excerpt from The Memoirs of a Balkan Diplomatist Our ancestor seems to have possessed artistic instincts and a romantic disposition which were transmitted, somewhat intensified, to his great-granddaughter. The conqueror Of the Turks at Belgrade, the new Hungarian nobleman, was himself conquered by a young Anda lusian peasant girl. It occurred thus. The Empress Maria Theresa, wishing to introduce silk-wool sheep into Hungary, brought from Andalusia the peasants of two villages with all their families and their silk-wool sheep, and settled them in Southern Hungary. Our great-great-grandfather saw a young girl amongst these immigrants, and, after some romantic efforts, succeeded in marrying her. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Mijatovic's Servia and the Servians-a biography of the author's homeland of Serbia first published in 1908-is his most famous work in English, with multiple printings since it was first released. The Balkan states had been making headlines in the early 1900s, and Europe was showing a great amount of interest in the region, but the public-and their ruling officials-knew very little about the nations themselves. Mijatovic wanted readers to get to know the heart of Serbian people: their beliefs, their celebrations, their literature, and their songs. He called them "the Irish of the Balkans," with all the strengths and weaknesses of character that such an appellation implies. Students of history and sociology, as well as anyone with an interest in Eastern Europe, will find this a unique and interesting book. Serbian writer and statesman CEDOMILIJ MIJATOVIC (1842-1932) was one of the leaders of Serbia's Progressive Party. He became the minister of finance at the age of thirty-one and passed many important reforms, including the development of a new currency and protections for the poor. He wrote a number of books in English, including A Royal Tragedy. Being the Story of the Assassination of King Alexander and Queen Draga of Servia (1906) and The Memoirs of a Balkan Diplomatist (1917).

Fitztroy Maclean was one of the real-life inspirations for super-spy James Bond. After adventures in Soviet Russia before the war, Maclean fought with the SAS in North Africa in 1942. There he specialised in hair-raising commando raids behind enemy lines, including the daring and outrageous kidnapping of the German Consul in Axis-controlled Iraq. Maclean's extraordinary adventures in the Western Desert and later fighting alongside Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia are blistering reading and show what it took to be a British hero who broke the mould . . .

Encompassing the period from the Neolithic era to the present, this book studies the peoples, societies, and cultures of the area situated between the Adriatic Sea in the west and the Black Sea in the east, between the Alpine region and Danube basin in the north and the Aegean Sea in the south. This is not a conventional history of the Balkans; rather, drawing upon archaeology, anthropology, economics, psychology, and linguistics as well as history, the author has attempted a total history that integrates many areas of the Balkan experience.