17 July 2015

Our Authors

OUR AUTHORS

MARK ALMOND (1958). Oxford historian, he has written extensively on post-Communist crises from Bosnia to the Caucasus and comments frequently on international affairs in the British media. He is director of the new Crisis Research Institute, Oxford (CRIOx). He was involved in helping the dissident underground in the Eastern bloc before 1989.

DÓRA BITTERA (Budapest, 1958) studied English and French literature and linguistics at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (1977–1982) and was all-round editor of the Hungarian Broadcasting Department, RFE/RL in Munich (1984–1994). While working as a translator and interpreter, and travelling widely as a foodie, she and her husband Tamás B. Molnár started publishing articles about cultural history in both the weekly feuilleton of Magyar Nemzet and on their blog, the Magic Chef. Together, they founded the Hungarian Culinary Society in 2004 with the aim of revitalising Hungarian food culture, the three core focus areas being: training of cooks, better products, deeper public awareness of food quality.

GÉZA ANTAL ENTZ (Kolozsvár/ Cluj, 1949). Hungarian art historian and politician, he is a specialist of architectural history, and has been coordinating and working on the complete topographic catalogue of historical monuments in Hungary. He is also a specialist on the historical culture of Hungarians in Transylvania (Romania) and the Uplands (Slovakia). In 1990–94 he was State Secretary for the Affairs of Hungarians beyond the Borders. In 1998–2002 he became Head of the Office for the Protection of National Heritage, and later a Deputy State Secretary of Culture.

LÁSZLÓ FÖLDI, expert on security policies Budapest, after having earned degrees in Hungarian literature and history in a teacher training school, he joined the legal predecessor of the Information Office (civil intelligence service). In the mid-1990s he became operations director of the Hungarian intelligence agency. In recent years he gave lectures (mainly focused on terrorism) at different conferences and universities.He is of ten interviewed by the media and publishes articles in the press.

DAVID GOODHART (London, 1956) is a London-based journalist and writer. After graduating from York University in 1979 he worked on the York Evening Press and then the Financial Times where he worked for 12 years including a period as one of the Bonn correspondents covering the unification of Germany. In 1995 he was the founding editor of the current affairs monthly Prospect. He stood down after 15 years but is now “editor at large”. He was director of the think tank Demos for three years and the author of The British Dream (2013) about immigration and multiculturalism.

THOMAS KABDEBO (Budapest, 1934) attended school in Baja and university in Budapest, studying Hungarian language and literature. He took part in the 1956 Revolution and had to escape from revenge. He settled in Britain where he took further degrees concluding in PhD in history. He taught military history in Manchester, and then directed the university libraries of Guyana, the University of Westminster and finally the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He published forty books in English and in Hungarian as well as forty translations. His awards include: the Middle Cross of Hungary, the József Attila Prize, the Arany János Prize and the Füst Milán Prize. He is the author of Danubius Danubia and Dictionary of Dictionaries. His present field of research is Hungarian–Irish historical connections.

ÁRPÁD KADARKAY (Kesztölc, 1934). Conscripted into the Hungarian Army, 1954–56, he deserted in November 1956 and joined the Revolution. After the Soviet invasion, he emigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia, in March 1957. While working the graveyard shifts at Eburne Saw Mills, Vancouver, he earned Double Honours at the University of British Columbia, 1958–1963, and on a fellowship, an MA in Political Science at UC Los Angeles, 1963–65, and a PhD in Political Philosophy at UC Santa Barbara, 1965–1971. He is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound, and lives in Tacoma, Washington. His publications include Georg Lukacs: Life, Thought, and Politics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), The Lukacs Reader (Blackwell, 1995), Human Rights in American and Russian Political Thought (University Press of America, 1982), and an English translation of Journey in North America, 1831, by Sándor Bölöni Farkas (Santa Barbara, 1978).

GYULA KODOLÁNYI (Budapest, 1942). Editor-in-chief of Hungarian Review and of Magyar Szemle, he is the author of eleven collections of poetry, scholarly and literary essays and poetry translations. He taught English and American Literature at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 1970–1989. He received research and teaching fellowships from the British Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, CIES and The German Marshall Fund of the US. He taught at the University of California in Santa Barbara (1984–85) and at Emory University in Atlanta (2004–2009), and read his poetry in English widely in the US. In 1987, he was a founding member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF). In 1990–94, he served as Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister. In 2000–2005 he was an Advisor to President Ferenc Mádl. In 2012, he received Hungary’s Middle Cross with the Star and in 2005 the President’s Medal of Honour for his public and literary achievements. With Magyar Szemle, he received a Prima Prize in 2003.

RONALD MAJLÁTH (Bácskatopolya/Backa Topola, 1980), Hungarian economist and political scientist. He is a specialist of political and economic developments in the Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe. During his studies at the University of Pécs he published several analyses in different journals. He has been working as a journalist for the Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet since 2010, focusing on foreign affairs and economy.

TAMÁS B. MOLNÁR (1954, Budapest), president of the Hungarian Culinary Society and editor-in-chief of the Hungarian Gault & Millau Guide, studied music (double bass) in Budapest and West Berlin. Being a passionate cook, he began working for high-end restaurants in Germany. He went on to take courses at the culinary institutes of Alain Ducasse and Lenôtre in France. Together with his wife Dóra Bittera, he started publishing articles about the cultural history of food both in the weekly feuilleton of Magyar Nemzet and their blog the Magic Chef. They also founded the Hungarian Culinary Society in 2004 with the aim of revitalising Hungarian food culture, the three core focus areas being: training of cooks, better products, deeper public awareness of food quality. Today, the Society has a unique library specialising in gastronomy, in 6 languages.

ANNA SZINYEI MERSE (Budapest, 1942), art historian. Her main field is the comparative study of Hungarian and international painting between 1860 and 1920. Between 1973 and 2007 she was Chief Curator at the Hungarian National Gallery. She wrote widely for professional journals and thematic anthologies, wrote and edited annotated catalogues, organised exhibitions and lecturing in Hungary and abroad. Works: The Life and Work of Pál Szinyei Merse (in Hungarian, 1990), Pleinair-Malerei in Ungarn (1994), Hongaarseschilderkunst 1860–1910 (1995), Ungarn und die Münchner Schule 1860–1900 (with others, 1995), Le nabi hongrois, József Rippl-Rónai (with others, 1998), Allaricerca del colore e dellaluce(2002), In the Current of Impressionism – Plein-air Endeavours in Hungarian Painting 1830–1920 (2009). She has received Hungarian and Belgian distinctions.