The first ever biography of the extraordinarily colourful Archduke Wilhelm von Habsburg (1895-1947). Tattooed, bisexual, crossdressing, multilingual, he was a major - & symbolic - figure in 20th-century European culture & politics. Born into one of the great European dynasties with every expectation of a glittering future, instead he became a playboy in Paris during the 1930s and died – a spy for Britain - under interrogation in a Soviet prison. The arc of Wilhelm’s life therefore describes the dying fall of the ancien régime – the Europe of his birth bears very little resemblance to that of his death.