Nike Wagner, the great-granddaughter of the composer, exposes the dramas behind the ever-controversial Wagner family and the Bayreuth Festival. She discusses Richard Wagner's life, his character and the music-dramas he wrote; the development of the Bayreuth Festival; her father and the new style of Wagner production which he inaugurated after the Second World War; the endless battles within the Wagner family; their relationship to political movements - above all to the Third Reich; and the struggles for the succession of the principality of the Festival. Nike Wagner is particularly clear-eyed on the relationship between her family and many aspects of German cultural-political life. The book chronicles in detail the often horrifying internecine warfare within the family, and its relationship to the extreme right-wing ideologies which have dominated much of its history.