Press gang

EVERY WAR HAS ITS reporters’ hotel. In Beirut the foreign press gathered at the Commodore, in Saigon at the Continental Palace. In Zagreb in the early 1990s we favoured the Esplanade, a stunningly beautiful, atmospheric art-deco building originally built for passengers on the Orient Express.

The hotel opened in 1925 and very quickly became the centre of the city’s social life until it was taken over by the Wehrmacht and the Gestapo. Even