BELINDA BROWN studied at the Central European University in Warsaw and did her research on the role of women in the Polish underground movement. Her findings were published in The Private Revolution: Women in the Polish Underground Movement. She has conducted research in a wide range of areas but has always maintained a particular interest in gender issues.
CHARLES FENYVESI (Debrecen, 1937) took part in the 1956 Revolution, then left Hungary and settled in the United States. Won a scholarship to Harvard and graduated in 1960. Has been a journalist since 1962, winding up with The Washington Post and later with U.S. News & World Report. Has written six nonfiction books and is now trying his luck as a playwright. His work include When the World Was Whole, When Angels Fooled the World: Rescuers of Jews in Wartime Hungary and Splendor in Exile: the Ex-Majesties of Europe.
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 wel las 12 books of poetry in Hungarian and two in English. He is a member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (Cracow).
NORBERT HAKLIK (Ózd, 1976), writer and critic, studied Hungarian and English literature and linguistics in Budapest. He is the author of two short story compilations (A Mennybemeneteli Iroda [Salvation Agency], 1998, 2013; Világvége Gömörlúcon [The World’s End in Gömörlúc], 2001), a novel (Big Székely Só [Big Szekler Show], 2006), and several translations from English into Hungarian. His latest work Egy Duna-regény anatómiája [The anatomy of a Danube-novel], (2013) is a set of literary essays that entirely focuses on Thomas Kabdebo’s novel trilogy Danubius Danubia. Haklik, a father of one, currently lives in Brno (the Czech Republic), and – besides his 9-to-5 job as a manager for a global IT company – is working on a new short story collection.
MÁRIA ILLYÉS (Budapest, 1941) studied French and Art History in Budapest and France. From 1969 to 1975, she taught French at Corvinus University in Budapest. From 1975 to 1992 she was Curator of the 19th Century and Modern Collections of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, about which she published Oeuvres françaises du XIXe siècle. In 1999–2002 she was Head Curator at the Ernst Museum in Budapest. She has lectured and written widely on art, also translating the Correspondence of Paul Cézanne into Hungarian. In recent years she has been working on the unpublished papers of her father, poet and writer Gyula Illyés, and helped to establish the Illyés Archives, a research centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
TAMÁS MAGYARICS (Budapest, 1953), historian, associate professor, Hungary’s Ambassador in Dublin. 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 its English language version, the Foreign Policy Review (2000–2010). 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.
BILL MARTIN was born in 1939 in Csorna, Hungary. As a third year secondary school student, he joined the local National Guard during the 1956 Revolution. Alarmed by rumours that those who actively cooperated with the revolutionary authorities would be rounded up and deported, he left Hungary on 15 November with two of his childhood friends. He arrived in Melbourne in March 1957. He did various jobs in Australia from grape picking to road works, selling home improvements, sales management, and finally running his own small business. He has been married to a Latvian for 51 years and is the father of a daughter and a son.
AMBRUS MISKOLCZY (Marosvásárhely/Turgu Mures, Romania, 1947) is a Hungarian historian born and educated in Transylvania. He is a Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and one of the editors of the New International Journal for Romanian Studies. As Chair of the Department of Romanian Philology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, he has done extensive research on the co-habitation of Romanians, Hungarians and Saxons in Transylvania, and published studies on mentality, with special regard to the culture of the middle classes, and to national myths.
JOHN O’SULLIVAN (Liverpool, 1942) is editor-at-large of National Review in New York where he served as Editor-in-Chief for ten years. He was a Special Adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street and later assisted her in the writing of her two volumes of memoirs. He has held a wide variety of senior editorial positions in the media on both sides of the Atlantic. He is the founder and co-chairman of the Atlantic Initiative, an international bipartisan organisation dedicated to reinvigorating and expanding the Atlantic community of democracies, launched at the Congress of Prague in May 1996 by President Václav Havel and Lady Thatcher. His book, The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister (on Pope John Paul II, President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher), was published in Hungarian, too, in 2010. Until 2011, he was the Executive Editor of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty in Prague. Currently he is the President of the Danube Institute, Budapest.
FRANCIS D. RAŠKA is an Associate Professor of Modern History at the Department of American Studies, Institute of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. He also is a Senior Lecturer at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy, Anglo-American University in Prague. Raška studie dat universities in the United States, Great Britain, and the Czech Republic. His main research interests are Cold War-era political exiles in the West, American foreign policy during the Cold War, and Transatlantic migration. Among his numerous scholarly publications are three books, namely The Czechoslovak Exile Government in London and the Sudeten German Issue (2002), Fighting Communism from Afar: The Council of Free Czechoslovakia (2008), and The Long Road to Victory: A History of Czechoslovak Exile Organizations (2012).
JAMES SHERR is Associate Fellow (and former Head) of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and was a member of the Social Studies Faculty of Oxford University until 2012. In 1999–2000 he was an adviser to the House of Commons Defence Committee and between1983–85 Director of Studies of the Royal United Services Institute. For twenty years, he has advised governments in the UK, NATO, the EU about develop- ments in Russia and Ukraine and for a number of years worked closely with Ukraine on defence and security sector reform. He is a regular participant in the Harvard JFK School Black Sea and Russia Security programmes and is a member of the Valdai Club. He is the author of Hard Diplomacy and Soft Coercion: Russia’s Influence Abroad (Chatham House, 2013). Other publications include Ukraine and Europe: Final Decision? (2013), The Mortgaging of Ukraine’s Independence (Chatham House 2010), Russia and the West: A Reassessment (UK Defence Academy 2008), “Hard Power in the Black Sea region: A Dreaded but Crippled Instrument” (2011) and “The Russia-EU Energy Relationship: Getting it Right” (2010).
NORMAN STONE (Glasgow, 1941) is a British historian, former student then lecturer at the University of Cambridge, professor of history at the University of Oxford, and currently professor of International Relations at the University of Bilkent, Ankara, Turkey. He was also an adviser and speech writer to British Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and is the author of many books on twentieth century history, including The Eastern Front 1914–17 (1975), Hitler (1980), Europe Transformed, 1878–1919 (1983), The Other Russia (1990), and The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A Personal History of the Cold War (2010).