Paul Lendvai was for 22 years a Financial Times correspondent and later became Editor in Chief of ORF, the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation.

• Prologue: in the cell - facing the camera. Part 1 The heights and depths of youth: farewell to the "Golden Era"; the road to Purgatory; from Stefan Zweig to Lenin; left-wing socialist illusions; suspicion, fear and show trials; terror and grim humour; my friend the informer; the lost years of a non-person; from crescendo to furioso - October to december 1956; the road to freedom. Part 2 Witness to the cold war: new beginning in Vienna - the birth of Gorgy Hollo, Arpad Becs and Paul Landy, the Financial Times as flagship; the power of striptease; new relations with the east - first return to Budapest; encounters with the Stasi and other services; nationalism and anti-semitism under Communist rule; Bruno Kreisky - orator and communicator. Part 3 An epoch ends: blacklisted; riling the Eastern Bloc; the Waldheim affair; a new lease of life - the past is never dead.

Paul Lendvai was for 22 years a Financial Times correspondent and later became Editor in Chief of ORF, the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation.

• Prologue: in the cell - facing the camera. Part 1 The heights and depths of youth: farewell to the "Golden Era"; the road to Purgatory; from Stefan Zweig to Lenin; left-wing socialist illusions; suspicion, fear and show trials; terror and grim humour; my friend the informer; the lost years of a non-person; from crescendo to furioso - October to december 1956; the road to freedom. Part 2 Witness to the cold war: new beginning in Vienna - the birth of Gorgy Hollo, Arpad Becs and Paul Landy, the Financial Times as flagship; the power of striptease; new relations with the east - first return to Budapest; encounters with the Stasi and other services; nationalism and anti-semitism under Communist rule; Bruno Kreisky - orator and communicator. Part 3 An epoch ends: blacklisted; riling the Eastern Bloc; the Waldheim affair; a new lease of life - the past is never dead.