| Summary: | In today's shrinking world the differences between one place and another appear to be rapidly diminishing yet never have so many peoples struggled to establish their own separate nation states. Resulting tensions have often become bloody and horrifying. What is the future of the nation-state in a world of multi-nationals and global communications? In this series, questions concerning identity and belonging are addressed by four world-famous writers and thinkers: Eric Hobsbawm, Desmond Tutu, Eqbal Ahmad and Maxine Hong Kingston. Marxist historian Professor Eric Hobsbawm grew up in Vienna, studied in Berlin and fled to London from the Nazis. He returns home and rediscovers the railway of his childhood - the Pressburger Bahn. Its fate has matched that of the European continent. A regional railway inside the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, it became international in the break-up of 1918. Hitler's annexation of central Europe led to the line being left stone-dead, severed by the Iron Curtain until 1989. Today, it's being rebuilt not for nationalist reasons but because of the great international force of tourism.
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