A dance between flames

Focusing on Berlin's heyday as a hotbed of both artistic excellence and moral decadence, this survey also assesses the political and historical factors that encouraged - or failed to prevent - the rise of Nazism.Between November 1919 and September 1939, many of this century's most sensational events in politics, the arts, theatre, cinema and night life took place in Berlin, where vulgarity and greatness lived side by side.

High culture, epitomized in the works of Brecht, Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator, was matched by the city's glamorously decadent night-life.

Part-politicized and part-criminal clubs thrived, the cabaret of political life sharing the same colour and exoticism as the city's underworld elements.Anton Gill fills in the political history of Berlin with passages describing the cultural scene.

He sketches the characters of scientists, actors and actresses, composers, conductors, painters and businessmen in an era which is arguably the nearest thing to a Renaissance revival the 20th century has seen.