History: Politicians everywhere could be forgiven for thinking that important historical anniversaries are something of a mixed blessing. Certainly they offer the potential for good publicity. All that standing around taking salutes, watching parades, making grand speeches and drawing parallels offers at least some opportunity for identifying their own fortunes with those of past heroes. But history also has a habit of coming back to bite.
No doubt the Hungarian prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, wishes that his own admission of lying to win an election had not been revealed in the weeks leading up to the 50th anniversary of the famous uprising in his country. Protesters have flooded the streets shouting "Fifty-Six, Fifty-Six", demanding his removal from office. "We fought against lies half a century ago," said one of those agitators, "and we fight against them now."
At a moment when the government might have hoped to inherit the spirit of "fifty-six", they have instead taken on the mantle of the despised Stalinists who helped the Soviets crush the uprising.
Although the 1956 uprising failed, it was recognised even at the time as a turning point in the battle of ideas in the Cold War. Both East and West were engaged in a contest as heirs of the Enlightenment. Each believed its own system represented progress and would eventually triumph. Many within the West, especially in the 1930s, had been seduced by Soviet ideals.
After 1956, it was impossible for anyone to doubt the true nature of Soviet-style communism and the lengths to which it would go to protect its sphere of influence in eastern and central Europe. It is no coincidence that 1956 became the year after which it became politically unacceptable in western Europe to be a card-carrying member of the Communist party.
The events of 1956 catalogue a tale of hope extinguished by brutality. On Tuesday, October 23rd, more than 200,000 protesters crammed into the square outside the Hungarian parliament. They were addressed by student leaders who had penned the manifesto of the uprising - the Sixteen Points. Their demands included free elections, the right to strike, release of political prisoners and, crucially, the expulsion of 75,000 Soviet troops based in Hungary. During the next three weeks, as it became apparent that the Hungarian government would not repress the uprising, the Soviets sent in a massive military force to do the job for them. Afterwards, they installed a hardline, pro-Soviet government and sanctioned the execution of Imry Nagre, the prime minister who had shown himself sympathetic to the spirit of the Sixteen Points.
Inevitably in such a story of idealism versus ruthless cynicism, it is those who faced hard choices that provide the most interest: the Soviet leader, Khrushchev, had the previous spring begun a process of liberalisation, but by the autumn recognised that it might precipitate the collapse of the Soviet empire; President Eisenhower, who understood that in a thermonuclear age any US intervention in a Soviet sphere of influence was unthinkable; and poor Imry Nagy. The Hungarian prime minister was a communist true believer. He vacillated and prevaricated in the early days of the uprising. Finally, a week into it, he proclaimed that "the tremendous force of the democratic movement has brought our country to a crossroads". He dramatically abolished the one-party state and announced that negotiations to leave the Soviet alliance - the Warsaw Pact - would commence immediately. It was a decision that would cost him his life.
There is a grim inevitability about these events as the story unfolds. Yet such is the brilliance of Victor Sebestyen's prose, the reader (encouraged, perhaps, by a memory of the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989) time and again is lulled into the belief that somehow this idealistic band of students facing down the full might of the Soviet Union can somehow pull it off.
Sebestyen's method is unusual, but highly effective. His chapters are short - often just a couple of pages - and have the immediacy of reports from the front line. Underpinning these dramatic, staccato reports is a depth of research - not least by mining the wealth of documents and interviews available since 1989 - that gives real perspective to events as they unfold on a day-to-day basis.
As such, Twelve Days is a triumph both of research and dramatic reconstruction. It is also a moving personal testament to a lost life: Sebestyen was just a babe-in-arms when his parents fled Hungary for the West in 1956.
Victor Sebestyen's masterly account of the 1956 uprising finds its perfect compliment in Revolution in Hungary. Erich Lessing is a Magnum photographer who worked in Hungary and Poland throughout 1956. He shot many of the iconic images of the uprising. This beautifully presented collection of his photographs - with elegant commentary - provides an arresting visual lesson in the physical and emotional disintegration of a city in turmoil. Pre-uprising street scenes of chess matches, joyful lunches and bustling markets are gradually replaced by grim faces, menacing tanks and the bodies of dead soldiers left to decay in the gutter.
The seasons play their part too. Lessing's photographs begin in the full glare of summer sunshine before moving inexorably to the bitter, freezing misery of a hard winter.
A hard winter, in fact, that would last more than three decades.
Richard Aldous is head of History & Archives at UCD, and author of Macmillan, Eisenhower and the Cold War. His latest book, The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs Disraeli, is published this month by Hutchinson
Twelve Days: Revolution 1956 - How the Hungarians Tried to Topple Their Soviet Masters By Victor Sebestyen Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 340pp. £20 Revolution in Hungary: The 1956 Budapest Uprising By Erich Lessing Thames & Hudson, 249pp. £35