MICHEL ANFROL graduated from the faculty of law at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences-Po). He became member of the Rally of the French People (RPF) in 1950, where he endorsed the role of Secretary General of the party’s youth organisation between 1954 and1955. He is member of the Charles de Gaulle Institute (renamed Charles de Gaulle Foundation) since 1971. He became President of the Friends of Charles de Gaulle Foundation in December 1994. He had a professional carrier in journalism, from 1961 to 1962, then between 1968 to 1969 he was editor-in-chief and lead presenter of the TV news at RTF. He worked as permanent correspondent of the TV channel TF1 in the USA (1963–1968, 1973–1978), in Italy (1970–1972), and in Buenos Aires for South America (1980–1987). He was President of the Radio Latina from 1987 to 1992, and a regular contributor to the French daily Le Quotidien de Paris.
GERGELY EGEDY (Budapest, 1953), historian and political scientist, university professor. He teaches at the newly founded National University of Public Service. He specialises in the history of political thought and British history. His major works include Nagy-Britannia története (A History of Great Britain, 1998, 2011); Konzervativizmus az ezredfordulón (Conservatism at the Turn of the Millennium, 2001); Brit konzervatív gondolkodás és politika (British Conservative Thought and Politics, 2005); Bevezetés a nemzetközi kapcsolatok elméletébe (An Introduction to the Theory of International Relations, 2007, 2011); Konzervatív gondolkodás és politika az Egyesült Államokban (Conservative Thought and Politics in the United States, 2014).
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.
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 a 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.
GYULA KODOLÁNYI (Budapest, 1942), Editor-in-Chief of Hungarian Review and of Magyar Szemle, 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. In 2015, he was Prima Primissima Prize winner in literature.
RYSZARD ANTONI LEGUTKO (Krakow, 1949) is a Polish philosopher and politician. Under communism he was one of the editors of the samizdat quarterly Arka. After the collapse of the communist regime he co-founded the Centre for Political Thought, which combines research, teaching, seminars and conferences and is also a publishing house. He has translated and written commentaries to Plato’s Phaedo (1995), Euthyphro (1998) and Apology (2003). He is the author of several books: Plato’s Critique of Democracy (1990), Toleration (1997), A Treatise on Liberty (2007), An Essay on the Polish Soul (2008) and Socrates (2013). In 2007 he was Poland’s Education Minister, and in 2007–2009 Secretary of State in the Chancellery of President Lech Kaczyński. He is currently a Member of the European Parliament, where he sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Deputy Chairman of the Conservatives and Reformists parliamentary group.
JOHN HARMON McELROY is the editor of a history of Columbus’s voyages and a diary of the US Civil War (The Sacrificial Years) and is the author of three books on American cultural history (Finding Freedom; American Beliefs; and Divided We Stand). A professor emeritus of the University of Arizona, he also held faculty appointments at Clemson University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison and, as a Fulbright Professor of American Studies, at universities in Spain (Salamanca) and Brazil (Santa Catarina). In 1981 he taught at the English Seminar in Poznań, Poland. He is a graduate of Princeton University with a doctorate from Duke University and has just completed a book titled America’s Culture, Its Nature & Enemies: A Synopsis.
ISTVÁN OROSZ (Kecskemét, 1951) is one of the most versatile Hungarian graphic artists. In 2011 he was awarded the Kossuth Prize, Hungary’s highest distinction for the arts. His graphic works are often related to postmodernism by archaic forms, art historical references, stylistic quotations and playful self-reflection. He has created many famous posters; he makes animation films, and is preoccupied with the art and science of optical illusions and anamorphic design. He is also concerned with the ambiguities of spatial constructions. These interests led him to write his recent book on Hans Holbein’s famous The Ambassadors and the Pharaoh, which exhibits a mastery of prose style and psychology, and also includes his own consummate poems.
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 Advisor 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.
KATALIN PETÉNYI (Budapest, 1941), art historian, writer, director. She graduated in art history and literature from Eötvös Loránd University in 1964. She organised exhibitions and founded museums in the 1960s and 1970s, and wrote art history books. She began teaching art history at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in 1971. In the 1980s she went on to work as scriptwriter, editor and director alongside Imre Gyöngyössy and Barna Kabay on countless films. She received among others the Cinema per la Pace Award for her lifework in 1988 and the Béla Balázs Award in 2015.
BARBARA PIAZZA-GEORGI (Budapest, 1952) retired from the United Nations development system in June 2015, after thirty years spent mostly in Africa and the Middle East. Her latest assignment was as UNFPA country representative in Palestine and Syria, focusing on public health, gender and youth issues in complex humanitarian settings. She holds degrees in political science, international relations and development economics from the universities of Reading (UK) and Witwatersrand University (South Africa). She has published research on issues related to peace building, social capital and entrepreneurship. She is currently based in Budapest (Hungary), working for the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta and the Jesuit Refugee Service.
ANNA PORTER was born in Budapest. She and her mother left Hungary in 1956, joining relatives in New Zealand. Porter received her BA and MA in English Literature from the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch. She went to Canada in 1968, worked as editor and editor-in-chief at McClelland & Stewart, president of Bantam-Seal and executive chair of Doubleday Canada. In 1979 she founded Key Porter Books, which published such authors as Farley Mowat, Margaret Atwood, Irving Abella, Martin Gilbert, Modris Eksteins and Josef Skvorecky. She sold her interest in the company in 2006. Porter is an Officer of the Order of Canada and was awarded the Order of Ontario. She has a number of honorary degrees. Her most recent books are Buying a Better World: George Soros and Billionaire Philanthropy, The Ghosts of Europe: Journeys Through Central Europe’s Troubled Past and Uncertain Future, winner of the Shaughnessey Cohen Prize for Non-Fiction and Kasztner’s Train, winner of the Writers’ Trust Non-fiction Award and The Jewish Book Award for Non-fiction. She has also written three crime novels and a memoir, The Storyteller.
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 Palmes Académiques award from the French government in 1996 and the Grand Officer Class of the Order of Leopold II from Belgium in 2002.