John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan

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 Vaclav 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.

IN DEFENCE OF NOTICING THE OBVIOUS – EDITORIAL NOTE

Regular readers of this editorial introduction – Darling! – have become accustomed to (and some doubtless exasperated by) its fascination with the themes of patriotism, cosmopolitanism and democracy. My first response to any complaint of our selection of topics would be to deny we are monomaniacal or even trio-maniacal (if

POST-ELECTION REFLECTIONS

On the warm and sunny Saturday evening after the recent Hungarian election, I was crossing the square in front of Parliament on my return from a trip to our local grocery when I ran into a large political demonstration. I do not think it was quite as large as the

WORLDS ALONGSIDE EACH OTHER

How much do we learn about people and places from diplomatic communiqués, political speeches, and government white papers? And how much from novels, plays, poems, travel writing and memoirs (those of actresses rather than of statesmen, of course)? Any answer to this enquiry must differ not only according to the

CULTURE AND ITS USES

Culture is a word that in recent times has increased its meanings to a remarkable degree. Not long ago it was largely restricted to Matthew Arnold’s definition of “the best which has been thought and said in the world” or, slightly more broadly, to the arts of painting, music, sculpture,

EUROPE AND LIBERTY

One of the more striking changes in the democratic politics of recent decades has been the blurring of the line, once sharply distinct, between foreign policy and domestic politics. Not long ago it was common for political parties that had passionate differences on a wide range of domestic politics to

CONSERVATISM, POPULISM AND CONVICTION POLITICS

If one of the attributes of political skill is to convert the opposition to one’s point of view, then the obvious comparison for John Howard is with Margaret Thatcher. I certainly see the likeness, and so did she. Both converted their opposition labour parties to economic realism to the benefit of the country. Unfortunately, it is starting to look as if both conversions were temporary and both UK and Australian labour parties were today whoring after doctrines that do not even have the benefit of being strange

TALES OF COMMUNIST ALBANIA

In the 1970s I was fortunate enough to share an office in the London Daily Telegraph with the veteran war correspondent, Clare Hollingworth, who died in January this year in Hong Kong at the age of 105. Clare was a wonderful office partner, kind, helpful, generous with advice, and full

TRUTH, LIES AND 1956 – EDITORIAL NOTE

1956 is the pivotal event in modern Hungarian history, and it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. The world recognises that as it relates to the world’s own history. Everyone can see that 1956 was the moment when the Soviet Union lost whatever small shred of decency and idealism it had retained after the Nazi–Soviet Pact,