BUDAPEST: A CRITICAL GUIDE András Török 1 873429 31 2 £9.95 246pp 62 maps and diagrams practical information index 116 x 219 mm portrait Enthusiastic and irreplaceable TLS Excellent series of entertaining walks The Independent A humorous and intimate book New York Times This is the ultimate insider's guide to Budapest. Non-stop facts and opinions about the proud monuments, the shabby little shops, the grand boulevards, the Art Nouveau cafés, the latest restaurants, the best bars, and the most unmissable museums. Since 1989, the knowledge and enthusiasm that this 'thinking dandy with a family' gathered over years of wandering in Budapest, and long afternoons discussing life in the fabled Café Europa, qualified him to serve as one of Hungary's most senior civil servants. He spent two years reinvigorating the Ministry of Culture, and is currently the director of Hungary's most powerful private cultural foundation. But Török has not neglected his 'humorous and intimate book', and over the last year has found time to prepare a third edition. Budapest: A Critical Guide, he says, 'tries to combine three types of guide with the advantages of all three: the Baedeker type, the critical guidebook and the alternative guidebook. Obviously it will not be exhaustive in any single type.' Instead it invites the traveller to join in the spirit - charming, high-spirited, lyrical, grandiose, cosy by turn - of what is certainly one of the most beautiful and fascinating cities of Europe, and one which, partly thanks to Török himself, has recently regained all its joie de vivre. András Török, born in 1954, was dissident no. 666 to the Communist régime. That is, he was not in the vanguard of a struggle for freedom: instead he spent the sleepy years of what he calls 'the meek and mellow dictatorship' getting to know his city, one of the great capitals of Europe, in all its secret delights and hidden details. Out of these explorations came Budapest: A Critical Guide. It quickly achieved classic status.