Hungary
How will Europe respond to a wave of Afghan refugees?
On Tuesday, Franek Sterczewski made a break for the border. Wearing a long trench coat and carrying a blue plastic…
Fortress Europe is dreading the Afghan migrant crisis
Fortress Europe is pulling up the drawbridge. The takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban is likely to being about a…
Hungary, Poland and the EU’s ‘diversity’ problem
It is quite something when the self-proclaimed ‘illiberal’ prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, reminds Brussels of its liberal principles.…
The strangest landscapes are close to home
This pleasant volume, the author announces in the introduction, is ‘not a nature book, or even a travel book, so…
Viktor Orbán goes to war on the European parliament
‘Times have changed, and whereas thirty years ago we believed Europe was our future, today we understand that we are…
Euros 2021: England are easily the most boring side in the tournament
England 0 Scotland 0 Hungary 1 (Fiola) France 1 (Griezmann) The wonderful Hungarians almost took my mind off England’s lamentable…
Is the EU breaching its UK treaty by failing to protect LGBT rights?
Has the EU Commission lost any sense of moral value? This week, Hungary, an EU member state, voted to impose…
Spellbinding: Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time reviewed
The premise for the unsnappily titled Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is this: a Hungarian…
The growing alliance between Central Europe and Israel
In 2018, the Czech President Miloš Zeman promised in a speech on the 70th anniversary of the founding of Israel…
Vaccines are testing Central Europe’s loyalties to the EU
In a fresh embarrassment for the EU in its vaccine rollout, breakaway member Hungary is now at the top of…
Hungary’s vaccine strategy risks showing up the EU
You have to admire Hungary’s chutzpah. Not only has it bypassed Brussels to pursue its own vaccine procurement strategy, it…
Orban and Macron, Europe’s new power couple
The unlikely alliance of Orban and Macron
The Visegrád bloc are threatening to tear apart the EU
The bad boys of Europe are at it again. The EU has been attempting to tie budget funds to members…
Bleak humour, resourcefulness and wit: Budapest Festival Orchestra’s Quarantine Soirées reviewed
There’s a certain merit in bluntness. ‘Quarantine Soirées’ was what the Budapest Festival Orchestra called its response to the crisis,…
Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming is a long, hard slog
The Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, who sounds like a sneeze and reads like a fever, is on a mission to…
One of the last living avant-gardists speaks – Gyorgy Kurtag on his new Beckett opera
Arriving in Budapest, I receive a summons I cannot refuse. Gyorgy Kurtag wants to see me. Famously elusive, the last…
Put your trust in Hungarian wine (yes, really)
The wines of Tokaji run like a golden thread through Hungarian history. There are references to their nectar-like quality in…
In the face of strongmen, conservatives are letting their principles vanish
In 1989, the year Soviet communism collapsed, John O’Sullivan, Margaret Thatcher’s former speechwriter, gave the world O’Sullivan’s First Law of…
Should the Final Solution ever be made into entertainment?
Amid the abundant cinema of Nazi atrocity, Son of Saul is exemplary. Ian Thomson explains why
1956: the year of living dangerously
The book of the year has long been a favoured genre in popular history, and is a commonplace today. While…
A short history of statue-toppling
Sculptural topplings provide an index of changing times, says Martin Gayford
Merkel’s grandstanding on Syrian refugees will lead to many more deaths at sea
By making them more likely to attempt the perilous journey to Europe, the German chancellor is luring would-be migrants to their deaths
Was Genghis Khan the cruellest man who ever lived?
From the unpromising and desperately unforgiving background that forged his iron will and boundless ambition, Temujin (as Genghis Khan was…
Bartók would have made history even if he’d never composed a note
‘All my life, always and in every way, I shall have one objective: the good of Hungary and the Hungarian…
Why Viktor Orban could be David Cameron’s new best friend
Hungary’s Viktor Orban could be the PM’s most influential ally in EU renegotiations. So what does he want – and what can he get?
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