17 March 2015

Our Authors

GYÖRGY ÁKOS BÁLINT, poet journalist and lawyer. While still a student in law, he was arrested with his father by the Gestapo on 22 March 1944, to be transferred in April to the internment camp of Kistarcsa, where he was detained until September. His book Sziget a mérgezett tengerben [An island in a toxic sea] relates the story of these two captivities. Since 1978 he has been member of the Presidency of the Hungarian Bar Association where he served as Secretary between 1997 and 2006, and as editor of the Society’s periodicals. He is the author of three volumes of poetry: Két szilveszter között [Between two New Years’ Eves, 1941], Költők kórusa [Poets’s choir, 1943], and Édes álmom az igazság [Truth, my sweet dream, 2012].

PÉTER ÁKOS BOD (Szigetvár, 1951) economist, university professor. He worked in economic research at the Institute of Planning, Budapest, taught economics in Budapest and in the US before 1989. He was Minister of Industry and Trade between 1990 and 1991, and Governor of the Hungarian National Bank between 1991 and 1994. In 1995–1998, he was member of the Board at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (London), representing East Central European countries. At present, he is director of the Institute of Economics at Corvinus University of Budapest. He is vice chairman of the Hungarian Economic Society, sits on editorial boards of Hungarian journals (incl. this Review). His major publications include A vállalkozó állam (Entrepreneurial State) 1987; A pénz világa (The World of Money) 2001; Gazdaságpolitika (Economic Policy) 2002; Közgazdaságtan (Economics) 2006.

ENIKŐ BOLLOBÁS (Budapest, 1952) is Professor and Chair of the Department of American Studies, ELTE, Budapest. Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Letters and Sciences (D.Litt./D.Sc.), she has published five books, including a monograph on the American poet Charles Olson (Twayne), a history of American literature (Osiris), a study on subjectivity in literature (Peter Lang), and a book on the tropes of performative subjectivity in American and Hungarian literature (Balassi). Bollobás has been visiting professor and invited speaker at various universities, including the University of Oregon, the University of Iowa, Yale, Berkeley, Stanford, Georgetown, UCSD and Cambridge University (England). Her opinion pieces appeared in The Washington Post and The International Herald Tribune, and were incorporated into the Congressional Record of the US Congress.

CHRISTIE DAVIES is a graduate of Cambridge University MA (Double first in Economics) PhD (Social and Political Science). He was for seventeen years full Professor at the University of Reading UK and has been a visiting scholar or lecturer in India, Poland and the United States. His most recent books are Jokes and Targets 2011, The Strange Death of Moral Britain 2004, and The Mirth of Nations 2002. He has been a radio producer and appeared on radio and TV in many countries and has published a large number of articles in the press, in magazines and on line in UK, US, Europe and Asia as well as a collection of humorous magical-science fiction short stories.

ILDIKÓ EMBER, PhD (Zombor, 1942), art historian.From1967sheworkedattheMuseum of Fine Arts, where she became Director of the Old Picture Gallery, a position she kept until December 2012. Focusing on the Dutch and Flemish painting of the 17th–18th centuries, she is the author of a great number of scholarly articlespublishedinHungarianandinternational journals. She designed several temporary exhibitions in Hungary and abroad; in 2004 she mounted the enlarged permanent exhibition of Dutch paintings of the Museum of Fine Arts, comprising some 250 works of art and giving a comprehensive survey of the golden age of Dutch painting. She edited the two volumes (2000, 2003) of the Summary Catalogue containing the results of scholarly research on these works, and in 2011 she launched the systematic catalogue series of the Old Picture Gallery, whose first two issues (by Rudi Ekkart and Ildikó Ember) offer new approaches to Dutch portraits and Dutch still lives. Her contribution to Hungarian art history was recognised by the Móra Ferenc Prize (2002) and the Ipolyi Arnold Medal. On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age (2014), the King of the Netherlands Willem-Alexander bestowed on her the Order of the Knighthood of Orange-Nassau.

GERALD FROST is a journalist who has written widely about domestic and international politics. He was Director of the London-based Centre for Policy Studies (1992–5) and of the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies (1980–92) which he founded. He has written widely for British, American and European newspapers and magazines including Encounter, Standpoint, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The New Criterion, The Wall Street Journal and Politique internationale. His publications include Hubris: The Tempting of Modern Conservatives; Anthony Fisher: Champion of Liberty; and Too “nice” to be Tories: How the Modernisers have damaged the Conservative Party (with Anthony Scholefield). From 2002–2009 he was editor of the fortnightly publication eurofacts. He is presently Director of the Danube Institute.

GEORGE GÖMÖRI (Budapest, 1934) has been living in England since November 1956. After studies in Oxford, he taught at the University of California (Berkeley), and researched at Harvard. From 1969 to 2001 he taught at the University of Cambridge. He published many books on Polish and Hungarian literature, as well as 12 books of poetry in Hungarian and two in English. He is a member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (Cracow).

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, 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).

TAMÁS MAGYARICS (Budapest, 1953), historian, associate professor, ambassador. He has been on the faculty of the School of English and American Studies, ELTE, Budapest since 1987. He also taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) (1991), the International European Studies (IES) in Vienna (2000–2011), and Corvinus University of Budapest (1999–2009). He has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade (2000–) and was its Director (2010–2011). He was the editor-in- chief of Külügyi Szemle and Foreign Policy Review (2000–2010). Currently he is Ambassador to Ireland. His main publications include Nagy- Britannia politikája Közép-Európában 1918 óta [Great Britain’s foreign policy in Central Europe since 1918] Pro Minoritate Summer and Autumn 2002; Az Egyesült Államok története a 20. században [The history of the United States in the 20th century], 2008; Az Egyesült Államok külpolitikájának története. Mítosz és valóság: Értékek és érdekek [The history of US foreign policy. Myth and reality: Values and interests], 2nd ed. 2014.

NICHOLAS T. PARSONS is a freelance author, translator and editor based in Vienna. A graduate of New College, Oxford, he spent two years in Italy teaching at the British Institute of Florence and as Reader in English at the University of Pisa before returning to UK to work in publishing for ten years in the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1984 he settled in Central Europe with his Hungarian wife, the art historian Ilona Sármány, and has since published some 17 books on cultural topics, writing also as Louis James. These include the Blue Guide Austria and the Blue Guide Vienna as well as the first English guide to Hungary to be published following the “system change” of 1989. His essay-length Xenophobe’s Guide to the Austrians (Louis James) has been in print for 20 years. His recent books are Worth the Detour: A Cultural History of the Guidebook from Pausanias to the Rough Guide, and Vienna: A Cultural History (Oxford University Press). Italian edition: Vienna: Ritratto di unacitta (Odoya, Bologna).

DANIELLE SPENCER, writer, teacher, instructor in the Columbia University Department of Narrative Medicine and the Einstein–Cardozo Department of Bioethics in New York. Focusing her work on narrative and visuality, Spencer presents regularly at medical humanities and bioethics conferences and has been published in The Lancet, WIRED, Creative Nonfiction and Esopus. She also worked as artist/ musician David Byrne’s Art Director as well as with photographer Nan Goldin, and studied literary theory in Paris. Spencer holds a BA from Yale University and an MS in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. Her father, a mathematician, has worked closely with many Hungarians, including Paul Erdős and Endre Szemerédi; the family lived Budapest several times during her childhood, including a year in which she attended the Kodály Music School.

LÁSZLÓ TRÓCSÁNYI, Minister of Justice of Hungary (since June 2014). Graduate of the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of Eötvös Loránd University (1980), he was admitted to the bar in 1985, while also working as a researcher at the Institute for Legal Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences until 1988. In 1989 he became member of the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of the University of Szeged. Head of department from 2000, Professor Trócsányi also served as Director of the European Studies Centre of Szeged University (from 2004) and chief coordinator of French-language courses in European Law and of International Relations. He was visiting professor at Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve (2006–2009). He served as Hungary’s Ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg (2000–2004), and Ambassador to France (2010–2014). He received the Palmas Académiques award from the French government in 1996 and the Grand Officer Class of the Order of Leopold II from Belgium in 2002.