If you have any questions or queries regarding the Fellowship or its events please send your comments to Mrs Eva Norton.

Unless otherwise stated talks start at 7pm at the Hungarian Cultural Centre, 10 Maiden Lane Covent Garden WC2E 7NA. Please ring 0207 240 8448 or email bookings@hungary.org.uk if you would like to attend any of our events.

17 March 2012, Zoltán Bécsi: ‘The British-French rivalry as a reason to the failure of the Danubian Confederation (1918-1921)’

1918 was the year of the end of the Habsburg Monarchy in its 1867-dualist form of Austria-Hungary. In 1920 the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs initiated a project to reunite the successor states of the double monarchy into an economic union or ‘Danubian Confederation’ centred in Budapest. French-Hungarian negotiations were started early 1920 to achieve this new union. As we know, this project backfired by autumn 1920 following the signature of the Treaty of Trianon by Hungary. The Paris-Budapest negotiations triggered Prague to create the Little Entente (with Romania and Yugoslavia) to hinder this French attempt and it replaced the project of Central European unity polarising the region.

Zoltán Bécsi has a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies of Geneva and a M.Stud. in Historical Research from the University of Oxford. He is a visiting professor of the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations and an external fellow of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs. Zoltán Bécsi is also a former visiting professor of the Faculty of Law of the Univerity of Pécs, Hungary. 

12 January 2012 there will be a lecture by Sir Bryan Cartledge

on Britain, Hungary and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

to celebrate the 60^th Anniversary of the British-Hungarian Fellowship

18 November, 7pm at HCC

"Dracula's Shadow - The Real Story Behind the Romanian Revolution" is the chilling Cold War account of what actually started the bloody revolution in Romania on December 15, 1989, when church supporters of the dissident Protestant Minister László Tőkés in Timisoara rallied around his church to protect him from the military and Romanian Secret Police, the Securitate. For the first time ever all the participants involved in the secret mission that sparked the Romanian Revolution have agreed to talk in an award-winning documentary by Arpad Szoczi.

19 October, 7pm at the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) address: 14 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HD; tel. 020 7388 4539)
Professor Doris Behrens-Abouseif of the School of Oriental and African Studies will talk about " Hungarian Orientalists in 19th C Egypt". The lecture will focus on two Hungarian artists, Károly Lajos Libay and Iván Forray, who made some spectacular paintings of contemporary Cairo. Libay was a rather special artist with a pronounced realistic approach that focuses on people as well as landscape. He produced an album on Egypt to much critical acclaim.
Forray spent a significant part of his life traveling across Europe and he reached even as far as Egypt. His book entitled "Utazási Album Soborsini gróf Forray Iván eredeti rajzai és jegyzetei szerint. Olaszország. - Malta. - Egyiptom." was published in 1859.

"Me and my Shadows". Poet and academic George (György) Gömöri's account of being watched by the secret service of three countries (Hungary, Poland, Romania), interspersed with his poems and translations.

The Empire Stops Here - by Philip Parker
The Roman Empire was the largest and most enduring of the ancient world. From its zenith under Augustus and Trajan in the first century AD to its decline and fall amidst the barbarian invasions of the fifth century, the Empire guarded and maintained a frontier that stretched for over 10,000 kilometres, from Carlisle to Vienna, from Budapest to Antioch, and from Aswan to the Atlantic. Far from being at the periphery of the Roman world, the frontier played a crucial role in making and breaking emperors, creating vibrant and astonishingly diverse societies along its course which pulsed with energy while the centre became enfeebled and sluggish. Rome’s Danubian provinces of Pannonia and Moesia lay at the heart of its defence, acquired in the first decades AD, becoming some of the most heavily militarized areas in the whole empire and experiencing waves of barbarian invasions from the 2nd century onwards. In his book The Empire Stops Here, Philip Parker traces the course of those frontiers, visiting all its astonishing sites from Hadrian’s Wall in the north of Britain to the great Danubian cities of Vindobona (Vienna), Carnuntum, Aquincum (Budapest) and Viminacium, telling the fascinating stories of the men and women who lived and fought along it.


Philip Parker was born in Liverpool in 1965. As a publisher he ran the Times books list, including works on Ancient Civilizations and The Times History of the World. He has travelled widely in Europe, North and South America, North Africa, Asia and Australia. He lives in London with his partner and daughter.

15 October - Freedom of Expression - Toward a Comparative Analysis of the Hungarian Case Since 1990, by Mihaly Szilagyi-Gal
The fall of the state-socialist dictatorship in 1989 has provoked a fundamental transformation of the meaning of the public sphere in Hungary. These changes range from the legal and political guaranties of the freedom of expression established in the nineties for the first time since the late forties to, the some recent suggestions toward the new limitation of freedom of expression as a possible means against the dynamically increasing extreme right. The dilemma Hungarian democracy faces is to respect the freedom of those who make their intention explicit to undermine this still fragile democracy. With its extended media presence both print and online the entire scene of the extreme right embraces an even larger public area than the fourteen percent of the votes their political representation, the party Jobbik (Righter) has won on the last European elections and has managed to delegate three representatives to the European Parliament. The wide media scene of the extreme right does not only disseminate racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism, but it essentially contributes to the mobilization of the most dedicated fans to physically threaten well-identified social groups for their ethnic or sexual identity all over the country. The main thesis of the lecture is that what guaranties the successful expansion of these extremist groups is their capability to create a new media rather than their appearance in the classical political system. Further it is their especially wide cultural area of action and style ranging from traditional xenophobic cultural communication to mass-culture that makes them especially visible players of the media map of the country. The lecture briefly reconstructs the presence of right-wing radicalism in the media as well as the short legal and political history of the phenomena. Although the presentation is focused on Hungary, a comparative European perspective is also addressed.
Mihály Szilágyi-Gál is a lecturer at the Institute of Arts and Media, ELTE University of Sciences Budapest. He studied philosophy and political science in Budapest, Debrecen, and Tübingen and received his doctorate degree in philosophy in 2007 from the University of Debrecen. His area of research is focused on topics in politics and media as well as in modern political philosophy. He has also published many articles in the Hungarian press about politics and media.

29 September - Touching a nation's heart: Sir E. Denison Ross and his study of Alexander Csoma de Koros by Imre Galambos at the Royal Asiatic Society (14 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HD, tel. 020 7388 4539), 7pm.
The papers of Sir Edward Denison Ross (1871-1940) at the Archives of SOAS include a series of letters from Hungary thanking him for his contribution in bringing the world’s attention to Alexander Csoma de Kőrös (1784-1842). Some of these letters were produced collectively by learned societies and signed by dozens of male or female members, but many were written by ordinary people expressing their admiration for Csoma, the traveller who had walked on foot from Transylvania to India in search of the roots of Hungarian language and culture. This lively response was a result of a lecture Ross delivered on 5 January 1910 at the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta, which became a sensation in Hungary in a matter of weeks. In this paper I would like to look at the phenomenon of how Ross’s purely academic research, to use Albert von Le Coq’s words, “touched a nation’s heart” and earned him a celebrity status in Csoma’s homeland.

Imre Galambos studied Chinese language and literature in China, Hungary and the US. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley with a dissertation on the orthography of early Chinese writing. Since then, he has been working for the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, studying medieval Chinese manuscripts and palaeography. Beside the field of manuscript studies, he has also been studying the history of the exploration of the Silk Road.

26 March 2009 - Budapest and London - Rivers and Bridges

Sandor (Alex) Vaci has been a lover of London for half a century and has walked the streets of Budapest taking snapshots of doorways for his recent exhibition. The idea for this talk arose from a plan to take two friends for a walk along the south side of the river Thames looking at the bridges and anything else that took their fancy, and evolved into a parallel history of bridges. But one cannot talk about bridges without the rivers and cannot talk about rivers without the buildings along their banks. They form a kind of river-entity. Vaci also dwelled on the works of William Tierney Clark for he, who designed both the Hammersmith Bridge in London and the Széchenyi Chain Bridge in Budapest, is the historic connection between the two cities.

Sandor Vaci is a trained architect (member of the Royal Institute of British Architects) with numerous British-Hungarian interests. He was the curator of the Hungarian Architecture Today: Modernist and Organic at the RIBA and Glasgow in 2004 as part of the Magyar Magic programme. Last year he had an exhibition about Budapest Doorways (photos of which have been collected over several years of walking the historic city centre) at the Gödör Klub in Budapest.


26 February 2009 - Seeing Through the Glorious Fin-de-Siecle: An Overview of Hungary before WWI
In his stimulating talk Sébastien Pant talked about the political, economic and social situation in Hungary at the turn of the 19th century and assessed just how much of a 'golden age' Hungary was experiencing at this time. He examined the way in which Hungary's political system functioned by looking at Hungary's relationship with Austria, the major political parties and their policies, electoral practices, or the feeling of suppressed Hungarian national sentiment for example. He also focussed on the major economic advances made during this period; and both the new and older social questions that affected Hungary.

Sébastien Pant is a PhD student at the University of Southampton. His thesis is focused on the particularly interesting case of multi-ethnic Hungary at the end of the nineteenth century and examines the impact of the "nationality question" on Hungarian politics during that period.

10 June 2008 - Dr Susan Whitfield: Aurel Stein: Savant of the Silk Road
Aurel Stein was an extraordinary man respected and loved by many during his lifetime, but now largely forgotten except by specialist scholars. Although many others travelled and excavated at Silk Road sites in the first decades of the 20th century, in terms of numbers of expeditions, items collected, reports generated, photographs taken, maps drawn, publications and scholarship Stein outdid all others. This was depiste having a full time job and a large circle of friends, colleagues and dependants whom he never neglected.
In her illustrated talk, Susan Whitfield introduced Stein, his life, dogs, friends and work. She also talked briefly about what is being done today to make Stein's legacy accessible to scholars and others worldwide.

Dr Susan Whitfield is Director of the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, working with scholars worldwide on bringing the Stein and other collections together on the internet. She is an historian of China and the Silk Road and has travelled and written widely on both. Her books include 'Life Along the Silk Road' and 'Aurel Stein and the Silk Road' (Stein Aurél, a selyemút felfedezöje).

Dr Ben Lucas: In Praise of a Psychopath - the poetry of Attila Jozsef through the eyes of a Psychiatrist, on 13 May 2008
This excellent talk generated a lively discussion about the relationship between his psychological development and his work. Dr Lucas used the poems Mama, Kesei Sirato, Tiszta Szivvel, Szamvetes, Ime Hat Megeltem Hazamat, Gyermekke Tettel, Then (English title)
Married to a Hungarian wife, Dr Lucas has had a gradual and pleasingly late exposure to Hungarian literature. He was first bowled over by Jozsef Attila when he saw a Hungarian film which featured a reading of Tiszta Szivvel and was struck by the similarity between the sentiment expressed in this near perfect poem and the self-narrative of some of his patients, especially those with personality difficulties. Dr Lucas has been a consultant psychiatrist in the NHS in London for ten years, working mainly with people with severe mental illnesses, but also with those with more enduring forms of psychiatric problems such as personality disorder. This similarity intrigued him to find out more about Jozsef's poetry and how his poems may have been influenced by his life.

Jessica Duchen's book launch of her latest book, entitled Hungarian Dances, on 4 March 2008

Jessica Dutchen has written her best book yet, the story of Karina, a violinist, mother, wife and lover, and the chasms in her life and background - an immigrants' child married to Julian from the manor, her parents Denes and Erszebet fleeing oppression and their own country, her grandmother Mimi a brilliant violinist from the despised Roma - that only love and music can even hope to cross.

Some books will open your eyes to another world - this one is even more generous. The story takes us from the inequities of pre-war Budapest, the glitter of war-time New York, and the brutalities of post-war communist Hungary to a London train crash and the cynical dynamics of 21st century public transport policy.

Reading it the first time, I just wanted to keep turning the pages because I was so involved with the characters and the story. Re-reading the last few chapters to write this, I found myself sucked in once again, but more able to appreciate how the story works as well as it does because it too leaps these chasms, and takes us with it.

Magda Czigány, author of the book Kényszerű tanulmányúton (translatable into English as On Involuntary Field Trip), came to England after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 as a refugee student, wishing to continue her studies as soon as possible. She was one of over 300 Hungarian students who eventually successfully finished their studies at British universities, at least to first degree level. Her book is a useful sociological study for anyone committed to explore the entire field of the motivation, aims and dreams, as well as practical and emotional difficulties of the roughly 200 000 Hungarians who left their country in the wake of the Soviet suppression of the uprising. But it is also a successful amalgamation of her personal narrative and the anecdotal and statistical evidence describing both the welcome extended to, and the challenges met by, the students who arrived in England with little or no English, little or no preparation for life in a foreign country, often burdened by loneliness, worry about friends and relatives at home, and about their own and their country’s future. Probably the two main conclusions to be drawn from this survey are that British academe, and the society it reflected, showed themselves at their best: charitable, with a tremendous organistional ability which demands little the State, and capable to feel deeply for the misfortune of a foreign nation in the midst of Britain’s own profound political and moral crisis over Suez, and that regardless of all the goodwill and material help, the newly arrived students had to overcome gigantic difficulties before they left higher education with fully earned degrees and, in some cases, exceptional distinction.