Europe Restoredis a highly personal account of the fall of the Iron Curtain, written from an unusual viewpoint. Eric Elstob was director of various investment trusts in the City during the years before and after the collapse of Communism, with a special interest in European affairs. But he also travelled as an ordinary tourist in eastern Europe, and this book juxtaposes vividly the vignettes of everyday life that he encountered with his high-level contacts in the financial and political world; a discussion of the problems of switching from a command economy to a market economy with the finance minister in the capital one month is set beside a talk with the baker who had just bought his shop in a village the next month. Such daily encounters offer exceptional grass-roots witness to the economic challenges facing the former eastern European countries as they struggle to rejoin the wider European economic and cultural entity.
ERIC ELSTOB was vice-chairman of the Foreign and Colonial Group until his retirement in 1995.