A Journey in Eastern Estonia Outside the front door, a crowd of rowdy transvestites were passing by. They had bottles of beer in their hands. One of them vomited against the wall. Another told us they were from London, English lads visiting Tallinn for a stag party. We had not
First we heard what sounded like gunfire, then came a shrieking sound like a festive rocket being launched. Only then did we see rising in the sky above the vines a great murmuration of starlings, circling and swirling in great arcs, coming together, coming apart, reforming. Thousands of starlings in
The Battle of White Mountain marked the end of the opening, “Bohemian”, phase of the Thirty Years’ War. The re-imposition of Habsburg rule and of Catholicism was swift. 27 prominent Protestants were executed in New Town Square. All other Protestants had either to convert to Catholicism or leave the country.
“Historians have taken the 1618 Defenestration of Prague as marking the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, a conflict that raged ferociously, mostly across Bohemia and other parts of the Holy Roman Empire, from 1618 to 1648, drawing in the armies of most of the European powers of the day.
A Review of Michael O’Sullivan’s New Book* In December 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor, then 18, set out from Hook of Holland to walk to Constantinople. It was the first year of Nazi power in Germany, and the last days of the old romantic era there and in the former Habsburg
Between St Isaac’s Cathedral and the Neva, stands St Petersburg’s most famous statue – “The Bronze Horseman”. It is a statue of Peter the Great on his horse trampling on a snake (representing Sweden, I am told). The horse rears up onto its hind legs and Peter’s right arm stretches
One of the many memorable scenes in Patrick Leigh Fermor’s wonderful Between the Woods and the Water involves a haystack, laughter and “those marvellous girls”. Then without exchanging another word we struck out for the shore [of the river where he and István had been swimming naked] as fast as
At the hilltop, above the terraces of vines, the Terézia Chapel’s bright white walls and new copper roof shine like a bright beacon against the deep blue of the autumn sky. The leaves on the vines are turning golden with the season. With the sun on our backs the October
Towards the end of the 16th century, Ottoman power temporarily waned and, with the Habsburgs in the ascendant, persecution of Protestants in Hungary again gathered strength. The ruthless regime of Giorgio Basta, attempting to Germanise and Catholicise Hungary on behalf of the Habsburgs between 1601 and 1604, is remembered as
In 1946, a Hungarian poet stood in front of the Reformation Wall in the Parc des Bastions in Geneva. Gyula Illyés’s poem – Before the Reformation Monument in Geneva – is now regarded as one of the most important Hungarian poems of the 20th century, alongside his better known 1950 poem One Sentence on
HUNGARIAN REVIEW is
published by BL Nonprofit Kft.
Editorial office: 24 Eötvös Street, Budapest, 1067, HUNGARY
E-mail: hungarianreview@hungarianreview.com
Publisher: Gergő Kereki
Editor-in-Chief: Tamás Magyarics
Deputy Editor-in-Chief: István Kiss
Editors-at-Large: Gyula Kodolányi, John O’Sullivan
Managing Editor: Ildikó Geiger
