BERLIN: Imagine A City

MacLean has known three Berlins - West Berlin, where he made movies with David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich; East Berlin where he researched his first book 'Stalin's Nose', and now the unified capital. Here he recreates through art and imagination the whole historic presence of a great capital from its beginnings to its present day, 600 years of history. Woven through are intimate portraits of 23 of its former inhabitants who shaped and destroyed, entertained, beautified and murdered. We encounter an ambitious prostitute refashioning herself as a princess, Marlene Dietrich flaunting her sexuality, and Hitler fantasising about the mega-city Germania. Other characters include Frederick the Great, Christopher Isherwood, Leni Riefenstahl, Albert Speer, Joseph Goebbels and the wall builder, Dieter Werner. Intelligent, entertaining and ambitious, 421pp, illus.