A silent midnight over the Danube, and this vast Bavarian pantheon towering over me like an arcane, mystical force. I walked through the snow, keeping outside the ring of floodlights which threw giant shadows from the goddesses. The circle of petrified Valkyries symbolised das großdeutsche Reich, that empire of the soul which has bewitched every Germanic despot from Barbarossa to Hitler.
So begins a journey into the German Reich, through the eighteen territories memorialised in the Hall of Liberation - from Prussia and Hanover to Bavaria and Austria. And this is a tale not just of buildings, but of people too, whether Swabians or Bohemians, poets or musicians, kings or margravines, National Socialists or Teutonic Knights, the Holy Alliance or the Wehrmacht. Via cathedrals and castles, ferries and pleasure cruisers, statues and spas, concentration camps and mausoleums, Geoghegan winds his way up and down the hills and rivers of a modern yet nostalgic landscape. Whether it's festivals and falconry or football and fascist marches, Bruckner, Mahler or Janacek, "Goring Hill" or the "Wolf's Lair", a Strength Through Joy holiday camp or bohemian Berlin, this is a compelling and vivid exploration of German identity through the traces of the past in the present.