Victor Sebestyen was born in Budapest. He was a child when his family left Hungary as refugees. He has worked for numerous British newspapers, including the London Evening Standard and The Mail on Sunday. He has written for American papers such as The New York Times. He was an editor at Newsweek. He reported widely from Russia and Eastern Europe when Communism collapsed. He covered the wars in former Yugoslavia. He is the author of Lenin the Dictator, Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, and Twelve Days: The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, all published in the UK, the US and many other countries. His most recent book, published this year, is Weimar Germany: Death of a Democracy.