A magnet for trade and travellers from all over the world, stylish, cosmopolitan Amsterdam is a city of dreams and nightmares, of grand civic architecture and legendary beauty, but also of civil wars, bloody religious purges, and the tragedy of Anne Frank.

Geert Mak is a jounalist and historian, and one of Holland's bestselling writers; he is author of the prize-winning In Europe and An Island in Time.

Philip Blom was born in Hamburg in 1970 and now works in London as a journalist, novelist and translator.